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GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019 . 1
CONTENTS
1
The Mandela-Obama effect: Legacies, divergences
and convergences
Bob Wekesa
3
Style form and substance in Obama’s Mandela
lecture Nancy Okang’a and Bob Wekesa
6
Comparing Mandela and Obama’s approach to
Africa Christopher Williams
10 Mandela, Obama and gender agenda Michelle Small
13 The Mandela-Obama legacies in comparative
perspective and reflections on Obama’s
commemorative lecture Francis A. Kornegay
17 Obama’s Mandela speech: democracy, human
rights and civil liberties perspectives Alice Brown
19
Mandela and Obama in global peace and
security Michelle Small
22
African media’s discursive framing of Nelson
Mandela’s centennial celebrations Nixon Kariithi
26 Thoughts on comparing Mandela and Obama J. Brooks Spector
28 The portrayal of Mandela and Obama in Africa and American media Andrew Meldrum
30 Mandela and Obama: the convergences of legacies Bob Wekesa
33 Legacies under siege: a view from the Donald Trump and Ramaphosa presidencies John Stremlau
The Mandela-Obama effect: Legacies,
divergences and convergences
Bob Wekesa: Researcher, Wits African Centre for the Study of the US
One of the major series of events in South Africa in 2018 was the commemoration of
the centennial of Nelson Mandela’s birth. At the peak of the event, former US president
Barack Obama delivered the sixteenth annual Nelson Mandela lecture on 17 July, 2018.
Thousands of South Africans braved the July chill in Johannesburg to listen to the then
much-anticipated speech. Millions more around the world tuned in placing the
commemoration among the mega global events of not just 2018 but the second decade
of the 2010s.
The Wits African Centre for the Study of the United States saw it fit to organise two
open forums to debate, deliberate and discuss the two giants of history before and after
the annual lecture. Indeed, this was among the first public engagements of the then
newly inaugurated Centre. The first forum, held on 10 July ahead of the annual lecture,
was anticipatory in nature, teasing out the potential for contemplating the implications
of the commemorations for the icons. The second forum, held on 27 July, reviewed
Obama’s annual lecture, again, gauging the appraisal of the event in South Africa and
around the world.
The forums compared and contrasted the combined and separate personas of
Mandela and Obama thus providing a canvass for reflections not just on Mandela’s and
Obama’s traits but what they mean for Africa-US and global issues. The events brought
together a diverse cast of academics and intellectuals to unpack the multiple viewpoints
with the understanding that this would enrich our elucidating, extrapolating and
interpreting as much the explicit as the symbolic themes thereof. The forums cross-cut
three overarching sub-themes: the significance of Mandela and Obama for Africa, the
US and the world; implications for foreign Policy, governance and diplomacy and
Volume. 18 September 2019
AN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS REVIEW PUBLISHED BY THE INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL DIALOGUE ASSOCIATED WITH UNISA
L dialogue
2
GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
representational perspectives drawing on media coverage. The think
pieces in this policy brief are drawn from the presentations made
during the forums. The broad objective is to record, document and
sustain the discussion, nay debate on the impact, implications and
significance of the legacies bequeathed by these global African
greats. The pieces explore the intersections of Mandela and Obama
as individuals and institutions and connect Africa and the US as well
as the world rather than treating the two in distinct or separate ways.
As intersections, a number of the pieces bear semblance no doubt
borne of drawing on the similar if not the same sources and
narratives. They go well beyond the Mandela centennial into the
past, the present and the future. Following on their presentations at
the forums, the authors were afforded leeway to approach their
topics with a style of their choice as reflected in the mixed voices,
differing thematic thrusts and disciplinary interests. In the briefs,
readers will interact with perspectives from scholars as well as
practitioners thus offering variegated windows on the worlds of
Mandela and Obama featuring personal accounts as well as detached
analyses.
We thank the Institute for Global Dialogue (IGD) for making
this publication possible.
3
GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
Style, form and substance in Obama’s Mandela lecture
Nancy Okang’a: Social science researcher based in Nairobi
Bob Wekesa: Researcher, Wits African Centre for the Study of the US
Barrack Obama has come to be seen as one of the master
public speakers of times. Indeed, his speechifying has been
identified as one among other assets that lifted him to the oval
office.
Closely following the plot of the speech delivered at the sixteenth
Nelson Mandela Annual on 17July 2018, this commentary piece
focuses on the style of delivery that Obama used during his speech.
There was warmth and flow for significant engagement in his words,
voice and general demeanour. The introductory part of his speech
was characterized by a sense of humour, gratitude, and humility.
When beginning his speech, he announced that first and foremost he
had “a correction” and “a few confessions” to make. In response to
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa who had invited him to
the podium, he light-heartedly praised his “good” dancing skills but
self-deprecatingly confessed his “poor geography” in not knowing
that South African Julys are wintry - there was a burst of laughter
and a bond was established at the outset. Indeed, in many other
instances, he strategically paused to absorb the applauses that
followed from the audience.
The speech was powerful and persuasive in the use of simple and
evocative language, touching on peoples’ emotions. Obama
achieved this by utilizing a combination of voice intonation and
choice of words. In terms of the rhetorical accolades in service to
Mandela’s legacy, Obama grasped the role assigned him by his
hosts. It was the celebration of a “life of one of history's true giants”
of “a young black boy [who would] alter history” and one whose
“light shone so brightly”, et cetera.
He invoked moments in Mandela’s life as a rhetorical devise to
speak directly to the audience about Mandela’s legacy: “you all
remember”, “you'll recall”, “Madiba teaches us”, “he (Mandela)
explained from the dock”, et cetera. History loomed large in the
delivery providing a broad canvas upon which Obama canvassed his
ideological thought. “… Because history also shows the power of
fear. History shows the lasting hold of greed and the desire to
dominate others in the minds of men”, et cetera.
The structure and flow of the lecture was cleverly wrapped,
weaved and mapped around the life of Nelson Mandela, thus
providing turning points, context and themes. In the first phase,
Obama took his enraptured audience back one hundred years to
Mandela’s 1918 birth. It is a period of: European colonial
domination of Africa; the building blocks of apartheid are being put
in place; the First World War has just ended; exploitation and
poverty reign supreme and discrimination on racial, ethnic, class,
religious and gender lines is the order of the day around the world.
Obama painted a grim picture of the second decade of the twentieth
century in which Mandela was born.
He signalled the transition to the second phase of the lecture with
the phrase: “That was the world just 100 years ago”. Here, we saw
Obama applying the rhetorical device of contrast between the pre-
Second World War period in which Mandela was born and the post-
Second World War in which he came of age. At the outset, he
intoned: “it is hard … to overstate the remarkable transformations
that have taken place since that time” (the post-World War Two era).
The world is on the march, with “self-determination, democracy and
rule of law and civil rights and the inherent dignity of every single
individual”. Union movements emerge; health, safety and
commercial mechanisms are established; access to education is
expanded.
The third phase of the lecture, going with the trajectory of Mandela’s
life as the basic framework, began with the release of Mandela. At
that point in the late 1980s to early 1990s, the world had made “very
real strides … since that moment when Madiba took those steps out
of confinement”. It coincided with “the fall of the Berlin Wall” and
The Mandela-Obama effect: Legacies, divergences and convergences
4
GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
a “wave of hope … washed through hearts all around the world”.
Obama implored his audience: “Do you remember that feeling?”
Rhetorical questions were spewed at the appropriate moments in
the speech. Some were meant to make the audience to momentarily
think. “Should we see wave of hope that we felt with Madiba’s
release from prison, from the Berlin Wall coming down – should we
see that hope that we had as naïve and misguided? Should we
understand the last 25years of global integration as nothing more
than a detour from the previous inevitable cycle of history…?” he
asked. He took us through the motions of Madiba’s chaperoning of
the new South Africa: negotiations, reconciliation, democratic
elections. Here, the reconciliation theme, expounded later in the
speech, is particularly pronounced. He connected the dots globally
by speaking of Mandela as a representative of a new international
order in the post-Cold War era. Among other dynamics, we saw the
“nuclear détente … a prosperous Japan … a unified Europe
anchored in NATO … the entry of China into the world's system of
trade … dictatorships [begin] to give way to democracies”.
The fourth, final and core phase of the lecture is one in which
unbridled globalization came in for Obama’s relentless upbraiding
and berating. In this phase, Obama used straight argumentation on
matters of his convictions. If we use Mandela’s life as the analytic
template of the lecture, we can surmise that the fourth and dystopian
phase of the lecture is after Mandela’s retirement from office in
1999; with the apogee as“the devastating impact of the 2008
financial crisis”. Obama argued that even with the progress made
after the end of the Cold War, the superstructure of discrimination,
inequalities and corruption never really fizzled out. In this phase,
Obama is confronting the challenges that threaten Mandela’s legacy.
The pace quickens and he begins to resemble an Obama on a
campaign trail. “For far too many people, the more things have
changed, the more things stayed the same”, he argued.
He enumerated some of the resultant challenges as: economic
insecurity; rise of a small but influential elite class; religious
fundamentalism; intolerance to racial and cultural diversity; free
press under attack and social media promoting conspiracy theories;
mass migration; climate change; pandemic diseases. Although
Obama was careful not to name names, the allusions and inferences
made it clear whom he was critical of. He is digging at his White
House successor Donald Trump when he argues that “you can be
proud of your heritage without denigrating those of a different
heritage. In fact, you dishonour your heritage … you're a little
insecure about your heritage if you've got to put somebody else's
heritage down … [and] putting people down and puffing [yourself]
up [shows you are] small-hearted, that there's something [you are]
just afraid of.” Through words, Obama painted a picture of the
current world’s state of affairs, evoked specific memories and in the
end presented a vista of hope. Interesting to note is the manner in
which, throughout, he largely posed as a speaker who is merely
stating facts. To emphasize this, he urged his audience to “look at
history”, “look at the facts” and “check the history books”.
In parts of the speech, he came out forcefully with regards to his
convictions. “Let me tell you what I believe,” he said to his
audience, “I believe in Nelson Mandela's vision. I believe in a vision
shared by Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln. I
believe in a vision of equality and justice and freedom and multi-
racial democracy, built on the premise that all people are created
equal, and they're endowed by our creator with certain inalienable
rights.” In this regards, Obama essentially weds himself not just with
Mandela, but with other great ‘legacy’ leaders. He alludes to
ideological differences with African leaders when he said: “we have
to resist the notion that basic human rights like freedom to dissent,
or the right of women to fully participate in the society, or the right
of minorities to equal treatment, or the rights of people not to be beat
up and jailed because of their sexual orientation”.
He circuitously critiqued a number of South African leaders
deemed racially intolerant when he said: “Madiba knew that we
cannot claim justice for ourselves when it's only reserved for some.
Madiba understood that we can't say we've got a just society simply
because we replaced the colour of the person on top of an unjust
system … it's not justice if [you revenge when] you're on top”. He
is repudiating the ‘Mandela-as-traitor’ discourse when he cites
Mandela saying that "… make peace with an enemy … and that
enemy becomes one's partner." He took a dim view of Western
leaders when he said: “[There] can't be an excuse for immigration
policies based on race, or ethnicity, or religion”, especially in the
wake immigration debacles in the EU, UK and the US.
To offer solutions to major global challenges, Obama returned to
Mandela again and again using the rhetorical strategy of repetition.
For instance, “on Madiba's 100th birthday, we now stand at a
crossroads … should we see that wave of hope that we felt with
Madiba's release from prison, from the Berlin Wall coming down –
should we see that hope that we had as naïve and misguided?”.
He advocated for “the liberal, progressive ideal” accompanied by
“inclusive capitalism”, forged in “freedom and democracy” and
seized of the need to protect the poor from the ill-effects of
globalization. The lecture marked an important moment for the
people of South Africa and Africa as a whole. As he reminded the
people of Mandela’s legacy, the need for equality for all was at the
core of this speech. He also intended to foster the mood of
5
GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
‘audacious hope’. With these as the two agendas eminent in
Obama’s speech, if the potential solutions that he offered were
rather intangible, he ended with a call for pragmatism, in the form
of the Obama Foundation’s work with young leaders across Africa.
Notably, in the closing moments of the speech, he heavily relied on
quotes from Mandela as an affirmation of his convictions.
He essentially wound down the delivery by making a clarion call
to all – a call to love. Quoting the lines of one of Mandela’s popular
quotes, “No one is born hating another person because of the colour
of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to
hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for
love comes more naturally to the human heart." He appealed for a
reaffirmation of equality and love as values that characterized
Mandela’s passion during his lifetime.
A sense of urgency was evident in his choice of words and tone
in the ‘homestretch’ phases of the lecture. At some point he declared
that “we have no choice but to move forward; that those of us who
believe in democracy and civil rights and a common humanity have
a better story to tell.” Being a politician, Obama has courted
opposition and criticism. Most observers would however disagree
with the substance of his speeches but not the style. No less was the
Obama’s Mandela speech.
6
GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
Comparing Mandela’s and Obama’s approach to Africa
Christopher Williams: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, International Relations Department, the University of the
Witwatersrand
This essay has two objectives. First, it reviews of some of the
key principles that guided the Nelson Mandela administration’s
foreign policy in Africa. And second, it briefly assesses
whether similar principles also animated former President
Barak Obama’s approach to the continent.
First, it is important to address what sources should not be used to
assess Mandela’s foreign policy principles. In 1993, an article
ostensibly authored by Mandela was published in the American
journal Foreign Affairs entitled “South Africa’s Future Foreign
Policy.” In the twenty-five years since this article was published it
has been widely quoted and often used to identify Mandela’s foreign
policy beliefs. There are two reasons why the Foreign Affairs article
is a poor reference point if one is to understand Mandela’s foreign
policy. First, Mandela did not write the article. In fact, studies by
two researchers who followed these matters – Matthew Graham and
John Siko – reveal that ANC officials were not substantially
involved in composing the document. Instead a number of
academics including Peter Vale, Gary van Staden, Allen Hirsch,
Rob Davies, and Anthoni van Nieuwkerk drafted the ANC’s foreign
policy position paper in 1993 upon which the article attributed to
Mandela is based.
It has been argued that Mandela likely agreed with the document,
and so it is acceptable to continue to cite him as its author. This
makes little sense as agreement is not authorship. Mandela had no
involvement in creating the article and it is unclear whether he
reviewed a draft before it was published. Though Mandela likely
approved of much the Foreign Affairs article had to say, if he had
systematically laid out his views on foreign policy, his nuance,
emphasis, and manner of expression may have been very different.
Precision matters, and it is imprecise to attribute authorship of this
document to Mandela. That the Foreign Affairs article continues to
be cited as an accurate expression of Mandela’s views indicates a
degree of intellectual inertia in the scholarship on South African
foreign policy.
A second reason the ubiquitous Foreign Affairs article is a poor
guide to understanding Mandela’s foreign policy approach is that it
was published before he took office. The document says nothing
about the difficult dilemmas and decisions South African officials
actually faced, and how foreign policy was actually implemented.
We can learn more about foreign policy during the Mandela era by
examining diplomacy in practice rather than evaluating previously
stated principles.
If the Foreign Affairs article is not a suitable guide, then what tenets
directed South African foreign policy during Mandela’s tenure as
president? Four principles stand out:
A focus on African renewal
An emphasis on achieving this renewal through
multilateral initiatives
An effort to encourage good governance that respects the
will of the governed as part of the renewal, and,
Because of a people-centered, rather than state-centered
focus, a willingness to criticize invidious or inept leaders
and push the bounds of the traditional notions of state
sovereignty
Though Thabo Mbeki rightfully receives much of the credit for the
African Renaissance idea, Mandela’s own focus on the continent’s
renewal should not be ignored. In a speech at the Organization of
African Unity (OAU) meeting in Tunis just a month after he became
president in 1994, Mandela described the beginnings of what he
termed an “African Renaissance.” In this speech Mandela spoke of
Africa’s many contributions to civilization and extolled some of
Africa’s finest leaders.
Throughout his presidency, Mandela would return to the theme
of an African revival, and relatedly, Africa’s responsibility to
spearhead this revival. For example, in 1997 Mandela was closely
involved in efforts to strike a peace deal between Mobutu Sese Seko,
The Mandela-Obama effect: Legacies, divergences and convergences
7
GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
the longtime ruler of Zaire, and Laurent Kabila, who led the Alliance
des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaïre
(AFDL or the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of
Congo-Zaire) resistance movement. In a media briefing on the
crisis, Mandela told reporters: “Africa would like to feel that they
are handling things themselves…not acting in response to
suggestions that come from outside the continent.” A few months
later in a speech to the Zimbabwean parliament, Mandela discussed
continental efforts to make peace in Angola, Zaire, and the Great
Lakes Region, and then emphasized:
The time has come for Africa to take full responsibility for
her woes, use the immense collective wisdom it possesses
to make a reality of the ideal of the African renaissance
whose time has come.
To bring this African rebirth about, Mandela sought to work with
friends and allies on the continent. Multilateralism is more
traditionally associated with President Mbeki’s administration than
Mandela’s. This association is partly attributable to the academic
tendency to divide and categorize to gain analytic leverage, even
when categorization may not be appropriate. One of former deputy
foreign minister Aziz Pahad’s major criticisms of the scholarship on
South African foreign policy is what he considers the artificial
division between the Mandela and Mbeki administrations most
scholars make. On the two issues of Africa’s revival and South
Africa’s multilateral approach, his critique holds much merit. These
were areas of continuity between the Mandela and Mbeki
administrations, not points of division.
For example, Mandela strongly endorsed a multilateral approach in
an interview with Time magazine just a few days after he was
inaugurated:
…We don't want to be assertive and remind Africa of the
days of apartheid. We would like to do things on a basis
of equality with other African states and consult them on
what role we should play…we have a problem in that we
have to improve our image as projected during the days of
apartheid. We have to be very, very careful not to create
the impression that we want to dominate other African
countries economically.
Mandela’s quote hints at one source of the new South Africa’s
multilateral approach, namely, an effort to distance itself as far as
possible from its predecessor. Other scholars have argued that the
ANC’s tradition of deliberation and debate led the new South
African government to take a more consultative approach on foreign
policy matters. Both these factors likely contributed to the Mandela
administration taking consultation with African leaders and
institutions seriously.
There are certainly those who argue Mandela’s foreign policy was
not guided by multilateralism. They often cite his intervention in
Nigeria after General Sani Abacha, the ruler of that country in the
mid-1990s, executed a number of Ogoni activists including the
writer-activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa. Mandela had been trying to
persuade Abacha not to take such a step and believed he had
assurances that Saro-Wiwa would not be harmed. When Mandela
heard that Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues had been killed, he was
furious, and sought to punish and ostracize Abacha. But both in
Africa and internationally there was little eagerness to join South
Africa in castigating Nigeria. Mandela’s stance left South Africa
alone on the continent. In 1997 an ANC foreign policy document
stated:
One of the very first test cases for us in the area of
promoting democracy and human rights Nigeria
highlighted the potential limits of our influence if we act
as an individual country. This further highlighted the
importance and need to act in concert with others and to
forge strategic alliances in pursuit of foreign policy
objectives.
From the above passage it seems many in the ANC thought
Mandela’s actions a misstep that marginalized South Africa. But
others in Mandela’s office believed their President had taken a
principled stand that was appreciated by many Nigerians. And Wole
Soyinka, the Nigerian Nobel Prize winning author, believed it was
Mandela’s finest hour.
The Nigerian situation was an exception to Mandela’s multilateral
approach rather than an indication of his more unilateral tendencies.
It does, however, illustrate a tension between Mandela’s effort to
cooperate with African allies and his penchant to openly criticize his
colleagues on the continent when he believed they had strayed from
the principles of good governance.
This was also exhibited in his 1994 OAU speech when he told
assembled heads of state:
We surely must face the matter squarely that where there
is something wrong in the manner in which we govern
ourselves, it must be said that the fault is not in our stars,
but in ourselves that we are ill-governed.
Mandela’s stature allowed him to make such criticisms of his fellow
heads of state, but this did not necessarily win him friends on the
continent.
His concern about the quality of governance in Africa also prompted
him to question the previously sacrosanct principle of state
8
GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
sovereignty. He opened the Southern Africa Development
Community (SADC) heads of state summit in Malawi in 1997 by
stating that though considerations of sovereignty were important:
“…these considerations cannot blunt or totally override our
common concern for democracy, human rights and good
governance in all of our constituent states.”
The following year, at an OAU meeting in Burkina Faso, Mandela
voiced even stronger support for conceptualizing the rights of
people, rather than the states they lived in, as inviolable. He said:
…We must all accept that we cannot abuse the concept of
national sovereignty to deny the rest of the continent the
right and duty to intervene when, behind those sovereign
boundaries, people are being slaughtered to protect
tyranny. In all instances, this takes place with no regard
whatsoever to the fact that the legitimacy of our
governments derives from our commitment to serve the
interests of the people on the basis of mandates given by
the people themselves.
This is, in essence, an articulation of the Responsibility to Protect
(R2P) doctrine before the concept gained traction internationally.
Mandela sought to work cooperatively with African leaders on the
project of African renewal, but, if necessary, he was willing to
criticize them when he believed they strayed from this vision. How
to balance the importance of continental unity against the imperative
to push back against states that undercut African Renaissance goals
remains one of the core challenges of South African foreign policy.
There are a few comparisons that can be made between
Mandela’s approach to Africa and that of former President Barak
Obama. First, Obama, like Mandela, was willing to be critical of
African heads of state. For example, Obama championed the rights
of sexual and gender minorities while visiting Kenya in 2015 despite
knowing that his host, President Uhuru Kenyatta, did not share
Obama’s views on the subject.
Another example is Obama’s forceful speech at the African Union
(AU) headquarters the same year, which focused on the importance
of leaders respecting term limits and not remaining in power
indefinitely. This was a thinly veiled criticism of some of the leaders
present that had clung to power for decades. In this speech Obama
cited Mandela’s example of stepping down willingly after a single
term in office. On an earlier trip to Africa in 2009, Obama
memorably remarked, “Africa doesn't need strongmen, it needs
strong institutions” —an idea Mandela would very much agree with.
Another commonality between Mandela and Obama is their
willingness to use military force to achieve political goals. This may
seem strange—since this essay focuses on two leaders who won the
Nobel Peace Prize—but neither Mandela nor Obama was a pacifist.
This is different, it is important to emphasize, than saying they were
eager to deploy the military—they were not. Yet there are examples
of the use of force during both their presidencies.
Mandela—though he was out of the country when South African
troops intervened to calm a crisis in Lesotho in 1998—participated
in and was fully supportive of the decision to deploy the South
African National Defense Force. When justifying the Lesotho
operation, Mandela said that South Africa possessed a “belief is in
peaceful solutions”, before adding, “but whether we're going to
continue with that policy indefinitely must depend on the reality on
the ground.” He explained that the military intervention was
required “to ensure that there is peace and stability so that the
Basotho themselves can sit down and explore a political solution.”
Though Mandela believed political solutions were ultimately
required to end conflicts, he thought military force in some cases
could help facilitate those political solutions.
Obama, similarly regarded terrorism in West Africa and the Sahel
as a largely political problem. On a trip to Senegal he stated:
It is my strong belief that terrorism is more likely to
emerge and take root where countries are not delivering
for their people and where there are sources of conflict
and underlying frustrations that have not been adequately
dealt with… So I don't start with the attitude of a military
solution to these problems.
Obama added, however, that some extremist groups were unwilling
to work through a democratic process or compromise—
necessitating military force.
The expansion of the American drone program, particularly in
Niger, during the Obama presidency as well as increased training
exercises with African armies attest to the important role, in some
circumstances, that Obama believed force could play. The
commonalities between Mandela and Obama extend well beyond
the two examples presented here, and include the charismatic
influence and “soft power” both leaders possessed. These
commonalities are addressed elsewhere in this volume.
To conclude, there is much we don’t know about President
Mandela and his approach to Africa. The legend looms so large that
it masks the policymaker, the president who governed and had to
make hard choices. Yet as President Obama stated, at Mandela’s
funeral in December 2013, he “was not a bust made of marble, he
was a man of flesh and blood…and that's why we learned so much
from him, and that's why we can learn from him still.” To learn from
the man, not the myth—good historical research is required.
9
GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
Fortunately, there are exciting opportunities to do deeper research
on both Mandela’s and Obama’s approach to Africa. For example,
the memoirs of several top Obama administration officials including
Hilary Clinton, Robert Gates and Ben Rhodes discuss in detail the
American decision to intervene in Libya in 2011.
President Obama’s forthcoming memoir will undoubtedly shed
more light on this important and controversial decision. Once
records from the Obama administration become available through
the Freedom of Information Act in 2022, researchers will be able to
explore Obama’s Africa policy in great detail.
Doing research on South African foreign policy during the Mandela
era is made possible by helpful institutions such as the Mandela
Centre for Memory, which houses a fascinating collection of
Mandela’s notes including some related to the international
challenges he faced. There is much additional material to be found
in the archives of the Department of International Relations and
Cooperation (DIRCO), the South African National Archives, and
the ANC archives at the University of Fort Hare. Moreover, many
of the officials that served in government during Mandela’s
presidency are open and willing to share their reflections from that
period.
Through utilization of these sources we can move past a
mythical and somewhat misleading understanding of Mandela, and
the similar myths quickly growing around Obama’s presidency, to
better understand how these statesmen conceived of international
relations and sought to address foreign policy challenges.
10
GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
Mandela, Obama and the gender agenda
Michelle Small: Lecturer, Department of International Relations, University of the Witwatersrand
“Imagine if you have a team and you don’t let half of the team play.
That’s stupid. That makes no sense,” remark by Barack Obama,
Nairobi, Kenya, July 2015.
The opening quote is drawn from a speech in which Obama outlined
the logic and importance of equality, and importantly equity,
between the sexes not only as a moral issue of “right and wrong”,
but also as a strategic forward-looking imperative underpinning the
“success and failure” of societies, nations and the global economy.
Mandela’s position on the need to legislate equality between the
sexes was similarly informed by forward looking notions of
‘progress’ as signaled in his 1996 Women’s Day Speech when he
argued that:
“… As long as outmoded ways of thinking prevent
women from making a meaningful contribution to society,
progress will be slow. As long as the nation refuses to
acknowledge the equal role of more than half of itself, it
is doomed to failure”.
The two speeches, given two decades apart, stressed equivalence
premised on two principles: “basic truths do not change” (as stated
by Obama at his 2018 Mandela lecture), and the place of
pragmatism in prosecuting the gender agenda. Drawing on the
thoughts and practices of the two leaders, this piece reflects on what
they did to advance gender issues during their tenures. The piece
contemplates issues around quotas and appointments in governance
structures, legal and policy mechanisms, and recognition schemes
through national awards and medals in Mandela’s and Obama’s
efforts to level the playing field for half the team.
The statement, ‘the personal is political’ is a succinct descriptor
of the two leaders when it comes to understanding their outlooks on
a range of social and political issues, though they were born in
markedly different times. Mandela, first born son to Nkosi
Mphakanyiswa Gadla Mandela, a chief and principal counsellor to
the Thembu King, and Nonqaphi Nosekeni, one of four wives
married to Chief Nkosi, was raised in a traditional Xhosa culture
that permitted polygamy and routinely practiced arranged marriage.
In 1918 when Mandela was born, no woman, black nor white, had
the right to vote in South Africa. Globally, women at this juncture
in history, were largely relegated to the private domestic sphere, did
not make up a significant part of the workforce, and were mostly
absent from official political life. In 1961 when Obama was born,
neither men nor women of colour had secured the right to vote; this
would be realized in 1965. The 1960s ‘decade of change’ was
momentous not only in terms of the civil rights movement but also
in terms of the women’s movement. During this decade, women in
America fought for a whole variety of rights: the right to
contraception, the right to credit, the right for equality in the
workplace, the right to serve as jurors, and even the right of
admission to Ivy League universities.
Historical context is significant in counter-poising Mandela’s
and Obama’s outlook on gender issues. Mandela’s private views and
conduct towards women are cast in a competing light by the women
in his life over time. As captured in a 2013 Mail and Guardian article
entitled “Madiba the Flawed, Husband and Man”, the legend was
depicted as a husband and father who engaged in home-making and
child-rearing, but who was also adulterous and absconded on his
family, and on occasion was physically abusive towards his first
wife Evelyn Mase. His second wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
spoke of Mandela as domineering and short-tempered, while Jesse
Duarte, current deputy secretary-general of the African National
Congress and one-time aide of Mandela, depicted him as a ‘ladies’
man’ vocal in his appreciation of women’s beauty often conveyed
in his flirtatious behaviour.
By 1998 the Mandela who wed Graca Machel his third wife, was
a ‘new man’ espousing values of non-sexism and gender equality, a
man of the new democratic South Africa. All three women in
Mandela’s life were independent in their own right; Evelyn was a
nurse who supported Mandela in his early days starting out as a
The Mandela-Obama effect: Legacies, divergences and convergences
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GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
lawyer; Winnie was the first black female social worker at the then
Baragwanath Hospital, renamed The Chris Hani Baragwanath
Hospital in 1997. Winnie would become the ‘mother of the nation’
given her political activism in the youth and women’s anti-apartheid
movement. Graca Machel, widow of Mozambique’s first leader,
Samaora Machel, served as a soldier and minister of education in
Mozambique, and global ambassador to the United Nations before
marrying Mandela. Mandela’s masculinity and orientation on
gender issues when viewed within historical context, shifts him
from polygamist to partner.
Obama contrastingly was born to Ann Durham, a white woman
from Kansas, and Barack Obama Snr, a black man from Kenya, at a
time in America when interracial marriage was still illegal across a
number of states. Obama was raised mostly by his mother, who
would become a single working mother, and his grandmother. His
mother was in many regards a trailblazer of her time: she fell
pregnant with Obama aged 17; married and divorced two men of
two different nationalities, races, and religions; pursued a number
of academic higher degree qualifications; worked as an
anthropologist on blacksmithing and micro-credit; and lived in
Indonesia, a conservative Muslim country. Her independence,
fearlessness and commitment to work and community service are
traits that significantly influenced Obama personally and politically.
In Dreams from My Father Obama notes that, “The values she
taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go
about the world of politics.”
Obama married Michelle Robinson in 1992. Michelle was an
academically gifted lawyer who had herself trail-blazed her way
against racial and gender odds to graduate from Princeton and
Harvard University cum laude in 1985 and 1988 respectively. She
served as an associate at esteemed law firm Sidley & Austin; as the
Assistant to the Mayor of Chicago; as Associate Dean of Students
at the University of Chicago; and as Vice President for the
University of Chicago Medical Centre. The stories of Ann and
Michelle reveal the “improbable journey” as phrased by Michelle
Obama at the Democratic National Convention in 2008, on the
realization and claiming of rights, both in gender and racial terms.
Their personal stories also however reveal the ongoing struggle
for gender equity: they as individuals did the bulk of child rearing
alongside their busy work careers, and Michelle would later
compromise her career aspirations, to allow Obama to realize his:
becoming Senator, and then becoming the first black, and 44th
President of the United States of America. Michelle in Becoming
writes, “It had been painful to step away from my work, but there
was no choice. My family needed me.” Obama was attuned to the
challenges still faced by women in this regard. At the 2016 United
States Summit on Women, he stated: “Progress is not inevitable.
It’s the result of decades of slow, tireless, often frustrating,
unheralded work.”
One way in which both Mandela and Obama sought to achieve
gender parity and level the playing field, was by appointing more
women into leadership and decision-making positions. In 1990 only
2.7% of parliament was represented by women in South Africa.
Mandela used his office to push for a one third (1/3) representation
of women in parliament, and the government portfolio, so that by
1994 parliament was composed of 27% of women. His appointment
of Frene Ginwala as House Speaker made South African history as
the first woman to hold that position in parliament.
Mandela’s advocacy for gender parity was underpinned by his
overall vision and goal of ‘total freedom’. At the opening of
parliament in 1994, he emphasized that, “Freedom cannot be
achieved unless women have been emancipated from all forms of
oppression... Our endeavors must be about the liberation of the
woman...”. Mandela’s signing and ratification of the Beijing
Platform for Action (BPA) in 1995 and the United Nations
Convention to End All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
(CEDAW), linked South Africa’s commitment to uphold and
promote women’s rights domestically to the pursuit of freedom and
equality for women internationally. In 1996, Act 39, the Gender
Equality Act, was passed and with it a constitutionally mandated
Chapter 9 institution, the Commission of Gender Equality (CGE)
was established, housed in the President’s Office.
Further promulgations such as the Choice on Termination on
Pregnancy Act (1996), Domestic Violence Act (1998), Recognition
of Customary Marriages Act (1998), Maintenance Act (1998), and
the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination
(2000), went far in legislating and institutionalizing mechanisms for
advancing, promoting and protecting women’s rights and gender
equality but did little to systemically and systematically address the
gendered triple burden of poverty, inequality, and unemployment
that the majority of black women in South Africa face.
Similarly, Obama during his tenure, focused on passing enabling
policies, laws, quotas and programs as a tangible way of levelling
the playing field. Obama appointed twenty six African American
women as district court judges, 10 women as federal court judges,
and 2 as Supreme Court justices. In addition, during his presidency,
Janet Yellen, the first woman to serve as chair of the United States
Federal Reserve Bank, was elected. These gendered appointments
were underpinned not only by efforts to redress inequities and
promote gender parity, but also by the rationale that the
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GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
administration and adjudication on matters of justice would not
change, unless the face of justice, and those adjudicating on judicial
matters changed. Salary inequities were another area in which
Obama intervened directly, recognizing that pay inequities are a
significant impediment to women’s emancipation and
empowerment. A 2009 study carried out by the National Women’s
Law Centre found that a woman typically earned 77 cents to the
dollar a man earned for doing the same job; this was even less for
women of colour (between 55-64 cents). It is significant therefore
that the first act Obama signed as President in 2009 was the Lily
Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The act legislated against pay
discrimination, and equal pay for equal work. In 2009, Obama also
established the White House Council on Women and Girls, and
created a new ambassadorial post ‘Ambassador at-large for Global
Women’s Issues’, as mechanisms of advancing the rights of women
and girls across government departments, and across the world.
On ‘women’s issues’ both Mandela and Obama pushed forth
gender specific programs. Mandela authorized for the introduction
of free prenatal and postnatal care in the public health system; free
contraception and abortions; and free healthcare under the age of
six. These gender-sensitized policies recognized the specific
challenges women face as mothers, and on the basis of sex.
Similarly, Obama championed for the free provision of eighteen
different types of birth control under the Affordable Care Act passed
in 2010, and passed a number of executive orders to extend
workplace protection to families and working mothers by raising for
example the minimum wage, overtime pay and establishing the
‘Head Start’ child care program.
Both Mandela and Obama used their office and positions of
power to elevate the profile, status, and contributions of women to
society and humankind. Mandela’s most notable deed was declaring
the 9 August as Women’s Day; making it an annually observed
national holiday that saluted the role of women in society. This
meaningful gesture recognized the post-facto role and impact that
20 000 women had played in 1956 when they marched to the Union
Buildings, seat of the South African government to protest against
passbooks. Obama used his office to issue a number of national
service awards and medals of recognition to women who have made
an impact on the course of history including Elouise Cobell, a
Native American advocate who championed a lawsuit that resulted
in a historical financial settlement for tribal homelands; Melinda
Gates, for her philanthropic work in health, education and
development; Margaret Hamilton, a mathematician and computer
scientist who led a NASA mission; Grace Hopper, a Rear Admiral
who translated computer programming code and served as a
programmer in World War II; and Maya Lin, an architect who
designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. According to McClellan,
Devine and Kopko in their 2018 Conversation article ‘What
Trump’s picks for the Presidential Medal of Freedom Says About
Him’, Obama awarded more Medals of Freedom to women than any
other US president and to the most diverse recipients to date; 36%
to women and 39% to people of colour.
By ‘re-tooling’ each system through an enabling framework of
gender focused policies, laws and appointments, Mandela and
Obama actively made room for women to participate on their teams
and level the playing field. Importantly, both men recognized that
the emancipation of women must be aided through guaranteeing
specific constitutional rights for women, alongside challenging
socio-cultural norms and historical practices. While Mandela and
Obama recognized the importance of using their positions and office
to elevate and advocate for the emancipation and empowerment of
one half of humankind, women’s rights remain difficult to claim in
everyday life. An area in which both Mandela and Obama failed to
penetrate effectively given its confinement to the private realm is
that of behavioural attitudes. As Obama reflected upon in a 2016
article in Glamour ‘This Is What a Feminist Looks Like’, “… the
most important change may be the toughest of all – and that’s
changing ourselves.” The continued prevalence of gender based
violence in both South Africa and America represents areas where
despite enabling policies, laws, norms, and role modelling, Mandela
and Obama were unable to lever change. Re-negotiating, re-thinking
and re-imagining masculinity and masculine behaviour is a much
harder endeavor, one where norms can be legislated, but not
necessarily accepted or embraced.
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GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
The Mandela-Obama legacies in comparative perspective and reflections
on Obama’s commemorative lecture
Francis A. Kornegay, Jr: Senior Fellow, Institute for Global Dialogue at UNISA and former Global Fellow,
Woodrow Wilson International Centre of Scholars
This reflection on former US President Barack Obama’s 17 July
2018 visit to South Africa to deliver the Nelson Mandela
commemorative lecture combines two perspectives based on
presentations at the University of the Witwatersrand before and after
the event. The first section focuses on a critical reflecting of the
Mandela and Obama comparative legacies; the second reflects on
Obama’s commemorative address and critical media reactions to it.
Assessing the legacies of the two leaders is not a straightforward
matter. Indeed, any effort to compare and contrast Mandela and
Obama has to confront a major challenge of complexity. Apart from
their sharing in common the fact that they are of African descent,
one must come to terms with how both emerged on the world stage
at different points in time and from markedly different vantage
points and political contexts.
Another consideration is the challenge of legacy-critiquing both
men. To do justice to such an exercise and to each of them, one has
to try and approach how one evaluates them dispassionately and
critically rather than contributing either to cultish hero worship on
the one hand or the already prevalent temptations to tear them down.
There is a tendency among many of us, including those of us who
fashion ourselves as political analysts and who should know better,
to approach the subject of Mandela and Obama as if we were
political babes in the woods who, because either Mandela or Obama
did not live up to our and everyone else’s unrealistic expectations,
become turned off or disillusioned, feeling that we have been
betrayed.
In fact, we tend to betray ourselves because we failed to relate to
these two men as imminently fallible politicians and complex
human beings. And of course, the core business of politicians is the
practicing of politics and the nature of politics is the navigating and
managing of contradictions under complex political circumstances.
While there are great politicians and political leaders, politicians are
not to be mistaken for Pope Francis or the Dalai Lama. All said,
while both Mandela and Obama qualify as inspirationally iconic
leaders, each in his own right, a major difference between the two
must be borne in mind: One has passed into history having lived
well into his 90s whereas the other is comparatively young as
politicians go. After having spent eight years in The White House,
Obama is still very much a ‘work in progress’ with chapters in his
biography still to be written and about whom there remain more
questions than answers.
To understand Madiba, as he was fondly referred to, we must
revisit his life. For, Mandela was shaped and seasoned in decades of
struggle and adversity against a mercilessly ruthless oppressor,
leading the ANC into what would become a bitterly protracted
armed struggle before finding himself locked away for 27 years off
the coast of South Africa. During his incarceration and upon release,
he had ascended to the status of a living world legend. He would
then devote his presidency and the remainder of his life to the
politics of reconciliation and the healing of divisions in the new
nation. The Mandela generation was a leadership class far into the
twilight of their lives, well past their prime.
There has recently emerged a critique of Mandela that instead of
having truly liberated black South Africa, rather, he betrayed black
aspirations. The criticism is that he did not negotiate the economic
transformation needed to accompany and underpin the democratic
The Mandela-Obama effect: Legacies, divergences and convergences
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GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
political transition. The view is that such a negotiation would have
substantively empowered the black majority. Mandela
overemphasized reconciliation at the expense of redemptive and
empowering justice. These are allegations not to be summarily
dismissed. They require a broader critique of the liberation
movement, its transition into governance and the internal and
external constraints during the closing decade of the last century.
Whether or not such a critique is a fair reading of Mandela is
subject to what should unfold as an ongoing and open-ended
discourse of reflection. Certainly, Mandela could not have overcome
such formidable challenges on his own. Then again, within the
leadership collective, there were paths not taken, some presciently
suggested by Mandela himself but rejected by his peers. Mandela
was well past his prime, at the political helm of South Africa for
only one five year term. It may be argued that were it not for his
deputy, Thabo Mbeki, he may not have achieved as much as he did,
having to recover from more than two decades on Robben Island.
Nevertheless, a critical reflection on Mandela’s legacy within the
context of the rise to power of the collective leadership of the ANC
and its alliance partners will remain fertile ground for students of
South Africa’s contemporary political history. One area where
Mandela and Obama converge is in their transcending the deeply
rooted racial divides in South African and American societies and
the polarizing national politics emanating from them. Mandela was
the apostle of post-liberation reconciliation whereas Obama inspired
visions of an emerging post-racial future. Both sought to persuade
their fellow citizens to live up to the highest ideals animating the
popular self-imagination of America’s national character. Mandela
and Obama were “apostles of hope”. Yet, perhaps in both the South
African and US cases, Mandela and Obama were confronting
differing but similar versions of the “impossible dream”.
In Obama’s case, questions of identity and ambivalence arise.
We need to try and understand his complexity as an African-
American politician of uniquely African immigrant descent and
biracial identity. His upbringing in the Asia-Pacific region of
America capped off by seasoning in the black politics and society of
Chicago following his Ivy-League exposure should also be factored
in. One is on safe ground in evaluating Obama to have been a good
US president, perhaps the best so far in a still young 21st century.
However he is not likely to go down as having been a great president
in the vein of the transformative Franklin Delano Roosevelt who
lifted the US from the Great Depression. Neither, does he compare
favourably to the deeply flawed and tragic figure of Lyndon Baines
Johnson who signed into law the civil and voting rights acts which
would have presented an uphill struggle for his assassinated young
predecessor, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
In truth of fact, Obama’s presidency was the upstart phenomenon
of a formidably talented but far from seasoned political personality.
He may have emerged at the apex of national leadership well ahead
of his time but, in so doing, triggered the reactionary whirlwind of
the backlash we see today which, in its magnitude, we may be better
off confronting now than later. This backlash can be arguably
understood as a resumption the American Civil War in 1860s as
reflected in the Trump presidency. This is a high stakes dynamic
which brings with it aspects of an America facing what amounts to
minority rule under a right-wing one-party dictatorship where the
increasingly multiracial-multicultural majority is effectively shut
out of power for decades. Moreover, this is happening in a world
made ever more dangerous by White America’s isolationist
nationalism.
This predicament has to be taken in as part of Obama’s legacy at
a time when Black America is in the nadir of perhaps the most
serious leadership vacuum ever experienced. Will Obama, in his
post-presidency, address the magnitude of this crisis or shun the
burden of engaging its challenges and dilemmas? Indeed, until
Obama writes his presidency memoir, we may never be able to fully
assess his historical and contemporary significance as we
contemplate the future. In foreign policy terms, there are elements
of his legacy’s potential that may be discerned: his tentative
repositioning of American grand strategy into a geo-economic
paradigm that would have repositioned the US as epicentre of the
west-to-east shifting global economy through his Pacific and
transatlantic trade initiatives coupled with his opening up to Cuba.
However, in this calculus, Africa was pretty much left out of the
unarticulated equation. For one of African immigrant descent,
Obama’s Africa policy was not about to enter us into the Black
Panther World of Wakanda. And here, I suggest that if one were to
do a comparative review of Obama’s two works – Dreams from My
Father and The Audacity of Hope – one may begin to understand his
foreign policy-geopolitical orientation. An analysis of the two books
indicates that his interests would be more inclined towards the Asia-
Pacific region where he sojourned as a child than the East Africa of
his parental heritage. Both regions converge on the potential of an
Indian Ocean economy, yet, Obama’s geopolitical imagination
failed to discern and exploit this connection.
Despite his shortcomings, Obama remains a work in progress and
one who continues to inspire the pride that Africans and African-
Americans alike should invest in. This applies to Mandela in the
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GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
sense of the pride most of us hold for instance with regards to the
commonality they both share in being the first black presidents of
two of the world’s most racially challenged countries. Indeed, there
is no progress without struggle and the struggle ahead remains the
challenge that inspired the sacrifices of Nelson Mandela who, in
turn, inspired Obama.
The comparability of Mandela and Obama was reflected in the
critical media reactions to his commemorative speech at the
Mandela centennial commemoration. In the wake of the July 2018
address, there were two notable critiques of the memorial lecture
worth citing as points of reference in revisiting the theme of
comparatively examining the two figures and their legacies. One
approach is to critique the critics. Writing in South Africans
Business Day, Adekeye Adabajo, director of the Institute of Pan-
African Thought and Conversation (IPATC) at the University of
Johannesburg had this to say:
...whereas Mandela was a saint, spending 27 years in jail
for his beliefs before acting as the black Moses in leading
his people to the promised land of liberation, Obama in
contrast was the sinner, sorcerer and false prophet Elymas,
who led his people into a barren wilderness. Obama
lacked the courage of his conviction and in effect became
a servant of Empire…
The other critique, by Marc Wegerif, a postdoctoral fellow at the
University of Pretoria, noted that while Obama’s delivery reflected
fine oratory and was uplifting, nevertheless, it was one that: “…
repeated an assumed linear path of progress that links liberal
democracy, human rights, economic liberalisation, innovation and
scientific breakthroughs” that, when combined with the well-known
challenges the world faces, made for an alluring narrative, yet one
devoid of substance or anything new in how these challenges are to
be addressed.
So, now, where do these ideal-typical reactions to Obama’s
inspirational oratory in commemorating Nelson Mandela leave us in
our effort to understand the legacies of both men? How do they
converge and diverge in ways that have impacted their respective
societies and the world? To be sure, the balance of critique is on
Obama rather than Mandela in as much as Mandela is the
commemorative icon who has passed into history whereas a still
relatively young Obama, as noted previously, remains a ‘work in
progress’.
The fact that Obama’s legacy is still being constructed and under
assault by his White House successor, also sheds contextual light on
Obama’s commemorative address that neither critique makes
mention of. Excluded are perspectives on how the current incumbent
in the White House served as the perfect foil for the remarks Obama
made and against which he was able to pay tribute to Mandela. As
such, the context of Obama’s Mandela commemoration is
worthwhile discussing. Coincidentally, the week in July 2018
during which Obama commemorated Mandela was marked by
bizarre events involving America’s right wing President. Trump
played supplicant to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki,
Finland courting uproar from observers in the broader context of
wreaking havoc on America’s alliances and on the international
trading system. That the coincidences were not grasped by some
commentators is revealing of the shortcomings in how Obama tends
to be misunderstood in terms of his record as president and in more
substantive areas of assessing how he relates to ‘Africaness’.
For, would Obama have hobnobbed with Putin in Helsinki as did
Trump, criticism could have been much more blistering and perhaps
game-changing with regards to his political fortunes in the US.
Trump seems to have escaped this ideational fate and one can argue
that this is because Trump may be excused as a white president
where Obama would not because he is black. This forms a major
part of his identity and how it informs Obama’s approach – or non-
approach – to Africa, the challenges confronting Africa and Africa’s
relations with the US.
Adebajo’s saint-sinner dichotomy, in its judgemental and
simplistic binary, tells us more about the shallowness of analysis in
what passes for pan-African thought and conversation than it does
about how convenient a point of reference Mandela is for Obama. A
more discerning point is that Obama seems determined to evade
articulating the African dimension of his personality in relation to
Africa’s challenges and to how this should inform Africa-US policy
specifically and global US foreign policy generally. It is may indeed
be fair to surmise that Obama has failed to confront the challenges
faced by African-Americans in the US especially with regards to the
extant leadership vacuum and that this may be broaden to his
failures with regards to confronting leadership problems on the
African continent too.
There is failure to understand the constraints to transformative
presidential leadership confronting a liberal to left of centre
democrat (Obama) compared to Trump’s right wing ilk. Of course,
one of the salutary outcomes of Trump’s Manchurian candidate-like
fixation with Putin as of July 2018 combined with the Russian
investigation and the GOP’s difficulty in coming to terms with
Trump and Russia, is the total discrediting of Republican Party
foreign policy-national security hard-line stance. Republicans will
never again be able to intimidate American liberals and the left on
Russia after Trump. In terms of how this relates to Obama, quite
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GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
naturally, American foreign policy was highly problematic before
Trump. And the foreign policy establishment interacting with
congressional constraints are factors that limited Obama’s freedom
of action that many a critic fail to appreciate. Obama openly chafed
at ‘The Blob’ that confronted him on foreign policy. For instance,
Muslims like to point to Obama’s failure to close Guantanamo as if
this is something he could dictate unilaterally by fiat – even though
he did manage to transfer most of Guantanamo’s prisoners out its
confines.
In the final analysis, there are big difference between the
American system of checks and balances and the Westminster
parliamentary system that many African countries have inherited
from Europe. Critiques of Obama fail to place his strengths and
weaknesses within this fundamental context. However, Obama’s
commemoration of Mandela was a perfect fit for him in as much as
Mandela evoked a universal resonance transcending Africa and the
‘African personality’ which Obama seems to want to evade.
Obama’s quest for transcendence toward that post-racial,
multicultural global future attempts to bypass the urgently needed
pan-Africanist revival that propels Africa, including South Africa
into what could be a Pax-Africana future where humanity returns to
genus ‘Homo’ origins. This is pertinent for a continent on its way
to becoming the demographic epicentre of the species. Obama
appears oblivious to how his identity and the initiatives of the
Obama Foundation might relate to this future. Might Obama and his
foundation should consider entering into a strategic conversation on
how this future might unfold?
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GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
Obama’s Mandela speech: democracy, human rights and civil liberties
perspectives
Alice L. Brown: Visiting Research Fellow, Wits African Centre for the Study of the US
In delivering the sixteenth annual Nelson Mandela Lecture, former
US President Barack Obama spoke to a stadium of 15,000 and called
upon us to keep alive the ideas that Mandela worked for including
democracy, human rights and tolerance. Obama’s speech drew on
broad themes that included, amongst others, the denunciation of
“strongman politics” and a condemnation of “the politics of fear,
resentment and retrenchment”. He lamented that today’s politics
often reject the concept of “objective truth” and he stressed the
importance of facts. Obama also warned that the press is under
attack, that censorship and state control of media is on the rise and
that social media is being used to promote hate, propaganda and
conspiracy theories.
It is against this background that an analysis of Obama’s speech
and its implications for the past, present and future implications for
democracy, human rights and civil liberties can be considered.
From the outset, with regard to Obama’s record on human rights and
civil liberties, I must admit, I am of two minds. As a human rights
attorney and activist, I condemn the use of drones and the
extrajudicial killings that took place during Obama’s presidency. I
am not alone in this. For instance, as noted by The Washington
Post’s James Downie in a May 2016 article, “Obama’s drone war
[was] a shameful part of his legacy”. An article in The Bureau of
Investigate Journalism pointed out that “Obama embraced the US
drone programme, overseeing more strikes in his first year than
Bush carried out during his entire presidency”. The article went on
to state that according to reports logged by the Bureau, “a total of
563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and
Yemen during Obama’s two terms … [and] between 384 and 807
civilians were killed in those countries….”
Further, I remain dismayed that although Obama signed an
executive order on 22 January 2009 mandating the closure of the
Guantanamo Bay detention facilities within a year, eight years later
in 2017, this prison for terrorism suspects was still open and holding
41 detainees. In another instance, I was and continue to be outraged
that after the 2008 financial crisis that took place during Obama’s
term in office, only one banker was prosecuted and imprisoned for
the consequences of their fraudulent, corrupt and criminal
manipulation of the markets that caused tens of millions of people
to lose their livelihoods, their homes and their pensions.
Yet, as an African American woman of a certain age and era, I
was, and remain, proud of the intelligence and dignity that Obama
brought to the Oval Office. Yes. I am still enthralled by the charm,
charisma and class of the first African American president of the
United States of America, much of which was on display in July
2018 when he delivered the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture.
Particularly in this day and age of the crassness, ignorance,
arrogance and vitriol that emanates from the current occupant of the
White House, I cannot help but to look back nostalgically on many
aspects of the Obama presidency. In the context of human rights,
social justice and civil liberties, which in my mind are key elements
in the mix of democratic values, three efforts undertaken by Obama
are particularly notable: the Affordable Health Care Act, which
provided access to health care for 17 million previously uninsured
people; the advancement of the recognition of the rights and dignity
of LGBTI individuals and the beginnings of the dismantling of the
54 year old embargo against Cuba.
In some respects, with regard to the presidency of Obama, I
believe that many of us were naïve and our expectations were far
too high. The expectations, hopes and dreams that we invested in
the America’s first African American president echoed many of the
expectations, hopes and dreams that we invested in Nelson Mandela,
the first black president of South Africa. Yet, the political, cultural,
and economic constraints these two “firsts” encountered were
formidable, vast and not to be underestimated or minimized.
This brings me to the next observation that I would like to share,
which centers on the importance of role models and trail blazers in
The Mandela-Obama effect: Legacies, divergences and convergences
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GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
the context of promoting human rights and democratic values: The
importance of these types of individuals may be hard to quantify but
that importance must be acknowledged, and should not be dismissed
or ignored. Role models and trail blazers have an impact on young
people, and old folks, and those in between. Their rhetoric and, more
importantly, their actions, can inspire, renew and ignite individuals,
communities and movements in the struggle for human rights and
social justice.
Personally, I can attest to the impact of the presence, or lack
thereof, of role models: I was born and raised in Northern New
Jersey in the US and, when I was young, I wanted to be a teacher.
Why? To a great extent it was because in my segregated social,
residential and educational context, the only black professionals I
had ever come into contact with were the one black teacher in my
predominantly black public elementary school and the two black
doctors in my home town. But then, a few years passed and at the
age of 14, I saw, for the first time, an African American attorney!
His name was Heywood Burns and he was on the front cover of the
New York Times. Why? Because he was standing next to my
“shero” (that is, a female hero), Angela Davis, the African American
political activist, academic, and author whom he was representing.
She had just been captured by the Federal Bureau of Investigations
(FBI) for allegedly aiding in an attempted escape of three prisoners
known as the Soledad Brothers. It was then that I declared that I
would be a lawyer, and specifically, civil rights lawyer. It was the
presence of Haywood Burns, a dedicated, brilliant human rights
attorney who also happened to be African American, that widened
my worldview and allowed me to understand that I had more options
and possibilities than I had realized previously.
Yes, I can personally attest to the power of trail blazers and role
models who stand for human rights and civil liberties. And so, I
applauded when Obama called for people to keep alive the ideas that
Mandela worked for including democracy and diversity, when he
declared: “Let me tell you what I believe. I believe in Nelson
Mandela’s vision….I believe in a vision of equality and justice and
freedom and multi-racial democracy built on the premise that all
people are created equal and are endowed by our creator with certain
inalienable rights”. I believe that Obama encouraged and inspired
many to continue to fight, or to join, the good fight. Moreover, I
believe that an engagement in the good fight and the promotion of
active citizenship has positive implications for democracy, human
rights and social justice. In speaking to friends, colleagues and
strangers who either were present at Johannesburg’s Wanderers
Stadium in July 2018 or who listened to Obama’s speech via the
media, I was struck by the excitement and enthusiasm he inspired.
People were reciting phrases like “There is only so much you can
eat” and “It shows a poverty of ambition to just want to take more
and more”. People were uplifted by Obama’s call for respect for
human rights and other values currently under threat.
Even my dear friend, Marc Wegerif (see Francis Kornegay’s
piece in this volume), who, in his City Press piece critiqued
Obama’s speech and opined that “….there was little substance and
nothing new…” and who observed that it was “…very short on
analysis of what drives accumulation and what blocked such
initiatives in the past”…. even Marc admitted that he was inspired
to clap and cheer for some of Obama’s well-made arguments.
Now, does all of this have a significant impact on the future of
democracy, human rights and social justice? Well, I would say yes,
it does. Can my assertion be measured and quantified through a
statistically randomized study? Perhaps not. But, let’s not forget: As
sociologist William Bruce Cameron said in his 1963 book entitled
Informal Sociology: A Causal Introduction to Sociological
Thinking, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not
everything that can be counted counts”. And, even though it may be
hard to quantify this type of impact and its implications, I would
argue that the presence of role models and trail blazers such as
Mandela and Obama has positive implications for the continued
struggle for human rights, civil liberties and social justice.
As many have already noted, the legacy of Obama is still
unfolding. He is relatively young and, if he makes it to the life
expectancy of the average American male, he may live to reach his
ninth decade. So, Obama may have many years ahead to strengthen
and improve his record on promoting and protecting democracy,
human rights and civil liberties. Indeed, some may suggest that he
still has time to repent and redeem himself of the sins of his past.
Only time and his actions will tell.
Moving forward and beyond an analysis of the sixteenth Annual
Nelson Mandela Lecture, we need to be cognisant of the fact that
legacies are always open to interpretation and reinterpretation. They
are always susceptible to new stories and new revelations. Legacies
are not set in stone. This applies to Obama and to Madiba as well.
How do we assess how these two “firsts” promoted or diminished
democratic values, human rights and civil liberties? These matters
are being continuously debated. Indeed, their stories are still being
shaped and formed. It is not yet over, not for either of them.
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GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
Mandela and Obama in global peace and security: “A common world that will rise
or fall together”
Michelle Small: Lecturer, Department of International Relations, University of the Witwatersrand
The quote in the title of this piece comes from Nelson Mandela’s,
address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York in
1994. It is a poignant reminder of the universal values that also
undergirded Barack Obama’s view of the world. In their tenures as
presidents, Mandela and Obama were both acutely aware of the
shared fate, destiny and potential of people, communities, societies
and nations in constructing global peace, security and prosperity.
For instance, in a speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs,
a year before he became president, Obama emphasized that “the
security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security
of all people”.
On a similar trajectory, Mandela observed in the 1994 address
cited above that “the reality … [is] that we live in an interdependent
world which is bound together to a common destiny”. He would
return to this theme in a 1998 address to the UN when he said: “…
no people can truly say it is blessed with happiness, peace and
prosperity where others, as human as itself, continue to be afflicted
with misery, armed conflict and terrorism and deprivation.” It is in
this vein that both leaders worked tirelessly to end conflict, establish
durable peace, and construct a world order in which all could rise,
rather than fall, together.
The world order that Mandela inherited in 1994, and the one that
Obama inherited in 2008, were starkly different in terms of the
security risks posed, and the security challenges each faced.
Mandela’s primary challenge was avoiding a racial and ethnic war
at home, while dealing with the security risks posed by an unstable
continent. As peace and security scholar Dan Smith pointed out in
2004, 118 armed conflicts raged worldwide between 1990 and 1999,
the vast majority being African and intra-state in nature. The
Rwandan Genocide, which resulted in the deaths of between 500
000 to 1 000 000 people coincided with the year and month of
Mandela’s inauguration as the first black President of South Africa.
In 1998, the tiny land-locked kingdom of Lesotho experienced a
coup d’état, while fighting persisted not far off in Angola between
the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA)
and the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).
Protracted civil wars heightened during this period in Liberia, Sierra
Leone and Zaire (later named the Democratic Republic of Congo).
Obama meanwhile inherited two ‘mission creep’ wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, as well as the task of fighting off and containing
internationalized Islamic terror. He also acquired long-standing
confrontations which required careful navigation such as those of
Israel-Palestine, North Korea, Cuba, Libya and Iran. Obama’s most
important challenge though was domestic. Following the 2007
financial crash and the resultant foreclosures, evictions,
retrenchments and soaring unemployment, Obama had to work hard
to bring about economic stability and security home. Sources
indicate that by 2007, the US had spent an estimated $368 billion on
military operations in Iraq and $200 billion in Afghanistan; the cost
in ‘treasures’ in these two wars in the face of a declining domestic
economic situation created a formidable domestic and security
challenge for Obama. Further, by the time Obama took over as
President, 4 221 US military personnel in Iraq, and 625 US military
personnel in Afghanistan, had lost their lives.
Both Mandela and Obama aimed in the first instance for dialogue
and diplomacy in dealing with their inherited security challenges.
Both men were however not averse to employing force or coercion
in what Obama characterized during his Nobel Prize acceptance
speech in December 2009 as “not only necessary but also morally
justified”. In Angola, Burundi, Zaire and Lesotho, Mandela engaged
in extensive mediation efforts to bring conflicting parties to the
table. In Burundi this had some success as it resulted in the Arusha
Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation in 2000, and the
deployment of an African Union (AU) peacekeeping force. In
The Mandela-Obama effect: Legacies, divergences and convergences
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GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
Lesotho, however despite extensive and ongoing mediation,
Mandela would eventually authorize a military intervention in 1998.
Mandela’s willingness to employ force in the face of dialogue
failing is also reflected in his initial reaction to the execution of
Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa by General Sani Abacha’s military
regime with Mandela cautioning that, “Abacha is sitting on a
volcano. And I am going to explode it underneath him”, as captured
in his memoirs published in 2017 and posthumously co-authored
with South African writer, Mandla Langa.
Similarly, while Obama recognized the importance of dialogue,
and of “painstaking diplomacy” that leaves “the choice of an open
door”, he argued that negotiations alone did not halt Hitler’s armies
nor would it bring Al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms.
Through dialogue, he was able to secure the Iran Nuclear Deal in
2015, restore diplomatic relations with Cuba in the same year and
lead efforts culminating in the Paris agreement on climate change in
2016. The insecurity generated by Al Qaeda, ISIS, Libya and Syria
however could only be met with force. Obama’s use of elite Navy
Seal operations, drone warfare and targeted extra-judicial killing to
eliminate for example Anwar Al-Awaki, and Osama Bin Laden
represented not only a covert and lethal security strategy, but also a
security strategy unsanctioned democratically or internationally.
Here the suspension of democratic values to achieve security
represented a trade-off that will cast a long shadow over Obama’s
presidency, in the same way that the military intervention into
Lesotho is seen as the low-point in Mandela’s Presidency.
In terms of freedom, democracy and prosperity, an emphasis on
values was overwhelmingly central to both leaders in their quest for
global peace and security, specifically, the pursuit of democracy and
freedom. Speaking to delegates at the UN in 1994, Mandela opined
that, “the empowerment of ordinary people of our world…” lay in a
constructing a world, “… unhindered by tyrants and dictators.” This
was echoed by Obama in his Nobel Peace Prize Lecture when he
reflected that, “peace is unstable where citizens are denied the right
to speak freely or worship as they please; choose their own leaders
or assemble without fear. Pent-up grievances fester, and the
suppression of tribal and religious identity can lead to violence.”
This conjoining of political, economic and social freedom as the
basis of attaining global peace and security is a theme both
presidents recurrently emphasized: Obama argued that “a just peace
includes not only civil and political rights – it must encompass
economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just
freedom from fear, but freedom from want”. This echoed what
Mandela had stressed a decade earlier, that “hundreds of millions of
these politically empowered masses are caught in the deathly trap of
poverty, unable to live life in its fullness,” …that “the very right to
be human is denied everyday … as a result of poverty, the
unavailability of basic necessities such as food, jobs, water and
shelter, education, health care and a healthy environment.” This
emerging view of security embedded in the material conditions of
human security also led both men to criticize international financial
institutions and global capital for their roles in furthering insecurity.
In his ultimate United Nations General Assembly address in
1998, Mandela highlighted that the “… situation in which the further
accumulation of wealth, rather than contributing to the improvement
of the quality of life of all humanity, is generating poverty at a
frighteningly accelerated pace.” In his Nelson Mandela lecture of
July 2018, Obama believed that such distortions and inequality were
the defining challenge of our times, and that the “explosion of
economic inequality [and] economic insecurity” posed a
fundamental threat to mobility, betterment and humanity, echoing
comments he had made earlier in 2013. Rather than a passive
acceptance of this, and cognizant of the complex task of addressing
structural capital and inequality, both men impelled individuals to
action against these forces that are not pre-ordained, but rather man-
made.
What does all this mean for the Mandela and Obama foundations
and to the broader issues of active citizenship in a changing world?
Their work in building global peace and security has not ended with
their presidencies. An emphasis on individual agency and
community endeavours in building institutions, trust, peace and
security ‘from the grassroots level up’ is evident in the work of both
foundations. The Nelson Mandela Foundation for example,
advocates for work to be measured in acts of service, such as
adopting a school, running education support programmes, growing
food banks, planting trees, partnering with the Foundation to
sponsor mathematics and science ‘LEAP’ education, or HIV/AIDS
programmes, cleaning local schools, rivers, and parks. The rallying
message to, “Free Yourself. Free Others. Serve Everyday”, is
enabled through volunteerism, and taking action against poverty in
concrete deeds built around for example ‘Mandela days’.
Importantly, in 2009 the Nelson Mandela Foundation linked up
with the UN in declaring July 18 ‘Mandela International Day’, to
build a global movement for good along with NGOs, and celebrities
around #Action Against Poverty and the #67 Minutes Campaign.
Similarly, the Obama Foundation has sought to promote change and
tackle global issues by working at the local level through
undertakings of ‘active citizenship’, and by building a global
community of like-minded individuals. Volunteerism in the form of
hosting sports events, arts and cultural exhibitions and shows, after
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school programs, town hall talks, parades, and cleaning up
initiatives, underscore the importance of building cohesion and
enabling change from the local level up. The Obama Foundation has
also been active in sponsoring youth leaders across the world with
academic scholarships, fellowships and training initiatives so as to
enable these “everyday citizens with the skills and tools they need
to create change in their communities”, and thereby the world.
A fitting conclusion to this piece draws on Obama’s words at the
July 2018 Mandela centennial lecture: “Hope over fear, unity of
purpose over conflict and discord.” In reviewing Mandela’s and
Obama’s legacies in global peace and security, what is clear is that
both men came into power during turbulent times. While both men
strived towards peace, and tried to recreate a world order
underpinned by democratic values, economic freedom and dialogue,
both were forced to employ coercive measures at times, as the
guarantor of security. Obama observed in his final address to the
United Nation’s General Assembly in 2016 that, “the world is by
many measures less violent and more prosperous than ever before,
and yet our societies are filled with uncertainty, and unease, and
strife.”
Turbulence and violence have persisted: rights and institutions
are under assault, strongmen and autocrats are on the rise, ethnic
nationalism has surged and intergenerational inequality has
deepened. Here, “hope over fear, unity for purpose over conflict and
discord” serves as the guiding ethos that Mandela and Obama sought
to follow in meeting global peace and security challenges, and it is
the spirit in which their foundations continue to work.
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African media’s discursive framing of Nelson Mandela’s centennial celebrations.
Nixon Kariithi: Senior Research Associate, Wits African Centre for the Study of the US and Tangaza Africa Media,
Rosebank, South Africa
African media coverage of the Nelson Mandela centennial
celebrations may be best understood through a number of discursive
frames, reflecting both on traditional news reporting and specific
contexts relating to the countries where the coverage originated. The
emerging picture, even from a simplistic review of the coverage, is
one that highlights Africa's complex geopolitical power relations,
and the marginalization of pan-African discourses in a 21st century
Africa trapped between global culture wars and intense internal
national identity debates. In between, the coverage bore classic
themes that embodied the critical appreciation of elements of
African contemporary political culture such as governance,
accountability and respect for human rights.
The media frames through which the centennial can be analysed
fall into at least three categories: holistic-reflective, discursive-
peripheral and geopolitical.
Firstly, reflective issue frames of Nelson Mandela's significance
to different contemporary African contexts were dominant. In
Egypt, Uganda, Nigeria and Kenya, media reports captured the
significance of Mandela’s anniversary as a moment of reflection.
Numerous media outlets utilised an AFP wire story that quoted
Graca Machel saying the world still had a long way to go to attain
gender inequalities and quality education - freedoms that Nelson
Mandela fought for.
In Uganda, the Daily Monitor asked whether Ugandans had
learnt anything from Mandela's legacy. The cogent analysis, by
renowned Ugandan academic, author, and political commentator,
Prof Mahmood Mamdani, reflected on political legitimacy and the
struggle for economic and social justice. These are two of the
pertinent challenges that undergird Uganda's current tenor.
Intolerance and selfless leadership were additional Mandela ethos
that lacked in the ebb and flow of Uganda's current political life,
according to Mamdani. He then used Mandela’s apparent wit and
foresight in stepping down after one presidential term weighed on
presidential term limits, one of Uganda’s most divisive political
issues:
Mandela was smart and strategic. He understood that if he
stayed in office for more than a term, he would have to
address the demand for social and economic justice, from
the vast majority of South Africans … He was modest
enough to realize that it would be best for him to leave that
task to the younger generation, and to live his remaining
years as a respected elder. All of us need to learn from him
to figure out what we can do and what is best left to others,
when we must work and when we must step aside and let
life move on.
Daily Monitor, 19 July 2018
Uganda’s Matooke Republic news portal quoted former US
President Obama’s scathing lecture to make the point that much of
African political contestation was tantamount to a mockery of
Mandela’s democratic ideals:
We have to stop pretending that countries that just hold an
election where sometimes the winner somehow magically
gets 90 percent of the vote because all the opposition is
locked up – or can’t get on TV, is a democracy.
Matooke Republic, 18 July 2018
The Daily News Egypt made a case for “the Nelson Mandela in us
all”:
Today, Mandela’s ideals are running into a wall of egoism
across the globe. Until recently, an entire presidential clan
plundered the state coffers of his home country with
impunity. From Ankara to Budapest, and Moscow to
Washington, egocentric leaders are calling the shots. At
the same time, the decades-old success model of a social
market economy and representative democracy seems to
The Mandela-Obama effect: Legacies, divergences and convergences
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GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
have lost its bearings, and social cohesion is crumbling as
a result.
Numerous African media outlets utilised an Associated Press (AP)
wire copy that advised enthusiasts keen to “trace Mandela's
footsteps 100 years after his birth” to start in Qunu and other villages
in the Eastern Cape where he was born and raised, before proceeding
to Apartheid Museum, Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum,
and Robben Island. The AP piece included a bitter-sweet sentiment
lurking in the excursion:
For visitors, making a pilgrimage to places connected to
Mandela’s life is both distressing and uplifting. While
South Africa has come a long way, this young democracy
still has a lot of work ahead, including improving living
conditions and resources for its majority black population.
A mobile app, Madiba’s Journey, created by South
African Tourism and the Nelson Mandela Foundation, can
help you trace the footsteps of the man who dedicated his
life to freedom.
Writing in the undispatch.com, a portal for diverse opinion and
comment by Africans in the diaspora, Zimbabwean native Mako
Muzenda wrote that she was “living proof” of Nelson Mandela's
legacy to advance African unity.
Earlier this year, I became a Mandela Rhodes Scholar. I’m
not a South African national. Born and raised in
Zimbabwe, I always experienced Mandela through the
television or odd newspaper. I was only a year old when
he became president, the media frenzy around his release
and election passing me by completely … However, in
everything I saw and read about him, I didn’t realise that
Mandela was a South (African) and African and African
statesman. His vision of inclusivity and equality didn’t
just speak to South Africa’s reality. His legacy spoke to
and included me too.
An op-ed in Algeria’s El Watan newspaper also highlighted a first-
person experience of the Mandela legacy, drawn from Mandela’s
perspective of challenging jurisprudence that contradicted social
justice:
“Si autrefois, j’avais considéré la loi de façon idéaliste
comme l’épée de la justice, aujourd’hui je la vois comme
un outil utilisé par la classe au pouvoir pour façonner la
société dans un sens qui lui était favorable. Je ne
m’attendais jamais à la justice dans un tribunal même si je
luttais pour elle et parfois je la rencontrais”
(I went from having an idealistic view of the law as a
sword of justice to a perception of the law as a tool used
by the ruling class to shape society in a way favourable to
itself. I never expected justice in court, however much I
fought for it, and though I sometimes received it.)
An analysis of African media headlines on the centennial
celebration further highlights the multiple perspectives evident in
the discursive construction of the Mandela legacy. The celebratory
frames focused on the calendar events and functions in major cities
honouring Mandela’s achievements, including mentions of pertinent
speakers or presentations as a sample of some demonstrates:
“Uganda joins world to mark Mandela's birthday” (Daily Monitor,
Uganda); “Raila to give address on life and legacy of Nelson
Mandela in South Africa” (The Star, Kenya), “Tributes as world
leaders remember Nelson Mandela” (The Guardian, Nigeria).
In the second category of media coverage, a cluster of discursive
frames related to a peripheral involvement in the celebration,
through which the centennial event was framed as a South African
affair. Media headlines and articles in this category focused
predominantly on South Africa’s political history, Mandela’s death
and contemporary socioeconomic issues. Several Kenyan and
Nigerian publications highlighted this discursive frame in their
headlines, for instance, “South Africans pay tribute to Mandela (The
Standard, Kenya), “South Africa pays tribute to Mandela” (The East
African, Kenya), “100 years since his birth, South Africa pays
tribute to Mandela” (Daily Nigerian, Nigeria).
Discursive references to South Africa’s current social and
economic strife were brusque and disparaging. Such coverage
pulled no punches in its attempts to blame some of South Africa’s
critical failures on its current crop of leaders. A lucid analysis by
Matthew Graham, a lecturer at the University of Dundee, titled,
“Blame politicians, not Mandela, for South Africa’s unfinished
business” argued that ANC’s current troubles were self-inflicted:
The ANC appears to have lost its sense of direction. The
political elite has been badly mired by scandals, most
notably under the former presidency of Jacob Zuma.
There is no doubt Mandela was a complex and flawed
individual, but his vision still matters. What is required in
this centenary year is for people from all sections of
society to work together to embody Mandela’s values and
convictions to keep the country moving forward to
overcome the deeply ingrained legacies and injustices of
the past.
The Conversation (Africa), 16 July 2018
An op-ed article in Nigeria labelled Mandela “the poster boy of
African democracy” and postulated incredulously that he would
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GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
have orchestrated the death of xenophobia in South Africa had he
still been alive:
The values Mandela preached [are] useless if South
Africans cannot learn to peacefully co-exist with their
fellow African brothers. If Mandela was alive, this devil
in South Africa would have been buried a long time ago.
After all, Mandela once said: "Peace is the greatest
weapon for development that any person can have.
Sahara Reports, 18 July 2018
Writing in Nigeria’s This Day, Kayode Komolafe, the newspaper’s
deputy managing director, enunciated “a post-truth world after
Mandela”, referring to tensions and spasmodic xenophobic attacks
on black Africans by South African blacks that attenuated decades-
old sense of solidarity with the apartheid struggle in many countries
across the continent.
The hostility of South Africans towards other Africans is
simply unjustifiable. Not even the objective factor of
poverty of the majority of the black people would serve as
a sufficient explanation. The subjective question of socio-
political orientation is also important in trying to
understand the ugly trend.
He added:
Forty years ago, Mandela celebrated his Diamond Jubilee
in prison. In Nigeria it was a day of expression of
solidarity by the government and people of Nigeria in
support of the liberation struggle in southern Africa. You
don’t notice a similar ferment on the street or official
circles anymore. Not with the killings of scores of
Nigerians by some disoriented persons in South Africa
who lack the sense of history of the solidarity and
friendship between Nigeria and South Africa.
This Day, 16 July 2018
Music legend Yvonne Chaka Chaka’s point in the New African
magazine espoused deep-seated frustration among black South
Africans over the stymied pace of change a quarter of a century after
the portentous 1994 democratic elections.
I, for one, have stories to tell and so would my mum. In as
much as I appreciate that Madiba preached forgiveness
and reconciliation, I still have my wounds and my
questions against the oppressors still remain unanswered.
I still ask myself, why was I made to feel so inferior? Why
did the colour of my skin make these people treat me so
badly that they would set dogs upon me as a child? I still
have the scars to remind me of that daily. And I don’t think
I got the answers for this horrific apartheid treatment.
New African Magazine, 16 July 2018
Ultimately, discursive frames of the centennial event focused on
beneficial lessons for Africa and the world. Speaking at the Nigerian
Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Prof Wole Soyinka
presented a persuasive argument on why the world “can't let go of
Nelson Mandela”:
Till today, the world will not let go of Madiba. When he
was battling with his life and one of his oldest friends said
it is time to let him go, I said no, that friend did not
understand the world; it is not the time to let him go. If he
understood the world, he would not say that. And even
after death, we cannot let go of him! … While Mandela
lived and related like every other human being, his self-
sacrificing, courage and determination, among other
features, stood him out and are the reasons why the world
will never forget him…
Daily Trust, Nigeria, 18 July 2018
Thirdly, the framing took a geopolitical stance. Expectedly, pundits
applied Mandela’s philosophical stance during the dark moments of
apartheid to current global political and development debates.
Writing in the African Portal, Nigerian researchers, Chukwuka
Onyekwena and Precious C. Akanonu saw useful lessons from
Mandela’s leadership for African development: prosperity,
integration, peace and good governance. Face2face Africa a New
York-based portal for pan-African issues said the world learnt five
leadership qualities from the iconic Nelson Mandela: brave and
humble in face of adversity, frank and thorough but not arrogant,
non-violent in all engagements; effective communication, and
optimistic (18 July 2018).
On social media, African celebrities commented on Mandela’s
influence on their lives and careers. Soccer stars Dedier Drogba,
Samuel Eto’o, Daniel Amokachi, Emmanuel Adebayor and Kevin-
Prince Boateng posted congratulatory messages, with some
including either personal pictures with Mandela or comments
purportedly to them. Drogba tweeted on 18 July 2018:
How are you my son? A @fifaworldcup in Africa without
you is not World Cup”. What could have inspired more
than the phone call and these words from Daddy Mandela,
the Wisest man I’ve ever met?! Happy 100 birthday
Madiba #gonebutneverforgotten #wiseman “Une Fifa
World Cup en Afrique sans toi n’est pas une coupe du
Monde,” qu’est-ce qui aurait put m’inspirer plus que ce
coup de fil de Papa Mandela, la personne la plus sage que
j’eus rencontré! Joyeux 100eme Anniversaire Madiba!
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Elsewhere, Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo also saluted
Mandela’s distinctive contribution to the continent:
Nelson Mandela gave us an example of sacrifice, of
dedication to principle, and of devotion to freedom that is
without equal in the annals of Africa’s modern history.
Twitter, 18 July 2018
In all, media discourses on the Nelson Mandela centennial
celebration highlighted critical debates about African political
leadership and questions of collective African identities. While
remaining aptly aware of the reasons undergirding the celebrations,
media coverage ventilated substantive issues that have defined
contemporary social, economic and political life in life over the past
three decades. In the process, the media reports discursively
unravelled deep-seated sensitivities, inviting audiences to self-
reflection and scrutiny of social norms and behavior
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Thoughts on comparing Mandela and Obama
J. Brooks Spector: Associate Editor, The Daily Maverick, retired American diplomat
In sharing thoughts on Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama, I will
begin the discussion from the perspective of my encounter with the
former and a near-encounter with the latter.
The first time I met Nelson Mandela was a few months after he
had been released from prison, but several years before he became
the first president of a non-racial South African government. On that
occasion, the American ambassador to South Africa, William Lacy
Swing, had invited Mandela to a private supper, so the two men
could gain the measure of each other. I was part of the support team
for the American Embassy when I was serving as the American
cultural attaché and, among other things, was responsible for the live
entertainment for the evening. I happened to be at the front door
when Mandela arrived and when he entered, he had a courtly quality
about him so many people have remarked upon over the years. He
greeted the housekeeper who opened the door; he greeted the cook;
he greeted the waiter before he sat down for the meal. I recall him
as a very calm man - but formal in an old school kind of way.
Years before that encounter with Nelson Mandela, my first
overseas assignment for the US Government was in Jakarta,
Indonesia. As it turned out, I had a significant amount of work with
the same English language teaching institution and cultural centre
operated by the US Embassy where Barack Obama’s mother,
Stanley Ann Dunham, had worked for several years. I also taught a
class there after my own regular work hours. If Obama and his
mother had stayed there a year later, or if I had arrived a year earlier,
I might well have known the future president when he was still a
primary school pupil.
In response to the theme of comparing the two men – the image
of the two men in the foreign media – I start with the observation
that both men were above average in height, they were both athletic.
Obama as a basketball player turned golfer; Mandela as a boxer
then, quite suddenly, discovered he was a rugby fan once he became
president. Professionally, they were trained as lawyers. In terms of
character, they showed rebellious streaks as young adults; Obama in
spending time at universities – Occidental College, Columbia,
Harvard – before settling down as a community organizer in
Chicago, and Mandela running away from the University of Fort
Hare to take a job in Johannesburg as a mine guard. And just by the
way, they were both their respective nations’ first black presidents.
Despite their differences in age, upbringing, and life circumstances,
there is a fascinating thread that runs between the two men. Recall
that when Obama was an undergraduate at Occidental College in
Los Angeles, the first overt bit of political activism on his part was
participation in an anti-apartheid rally. If his own memoirs are to be
believed, this was one of the key moments in the shaping of his
political activism.
We can mark a great turning point in their respective political
lives with a specific event. In Obama’s case, when he decided to run
for the presidency, he initially had met with considerable diffidence
and hesitation towards him on the part of much of the African-
American community. For many, he simply didn’t seem like an
African-American in the more usual sense of things, and many
potential supporters held back from committing to him. It wasn’t
until his speech on race, delivered at the 2004 Democratic Party
Convention in Philadelphia in the midst of that year’s primary
campaign that the switch went to “on” for him. I was in the US at
the time, and I watched as popular opinion among black Americans
turned from ambivalence and as they embraced him.
Obama had been pushed into speaking publicly about the
unfinished agenda concerning race and his more personal feelings
about the topic (and thus how he defined himself ethnically and
racially) after a video of his church’s minister, Jeremiah Wright of
the Trinity United Church, was released that showed the minister
uttering some extraordinarily harsh words towards the nation, and
towards white Americans. Forced by circumstance to state his own
case, Obama produced a carefully nuanced discussion of race in
America that cemented the allegiance of the vast majority of black
Americans to him, even as it also conveyed clearly to potential white
The Mandela-Obama effect: Legacies, divergences and convergences
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GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
voters that he was not a “race man” and that he would discuss race
in a way that was significantly different from what was the usual
style of most black politicians Americans were familiar with
hearing. The Philadelphia speech defined his relationship to the
nation’s racial conundrum in a way that was somehow a modern,
post-racial, transformative figure and made him acceptable to a
majority of the entire nation.
In something of the same way, in the first speech Nelson
Mandela delivered on the day of release from incarceration, from a
balcony of the Cape Town City Hall in February 1990, he essentially
read a text that restated all the old rhetoric of his party such as the
nationalization of the commanding heights of the national economy.
This was perhaps largely without his recognition of the vast changes
in the world economy, the global political landscape, and the way
South Africa itself had been evolving over the years.
However, once he had had a few days to absorb the changed
landscape on a first-hand basis, Mandela’s subsequent messages
began to shift. He quickly embraced a rhetorical style designed to
reassure a nervous nation. As he moved toward political authority,
he was not going to engage in a quick, traumatic, and revolutionary
upending of the national economic structure, even though the
political changes would certainly be revolutionary ones, as the
country moved towards a non-racial democratic society.
Personal, psychological characteristics also demonstrate ways in
which the two men intersect. Both men could demonstrate a high
level of empathy in personal and political terms. It is a very useful
characteristic for a politician, but not all of them have this essential
skill. These two men had this trait wired into their personas. Another
way to describe this is to call that characteristic the ability to see
something from the other person’s perspective.
Still, some of their respective critics believe they saw the two
men as overly cautious moderates, rather than the transformative
figures they actually were. Was that from the demeanour of their
having the natural caution of being lawyers? That, in turn, has
allowed critics from the left to see too much caution. The critique is
that they could have gone further, but pulled back. Ironically, both
men would watch successors seek to destroy much of their
respective legacies; Obama with Donald Trump, Mandela with
Jacob Zuma.
To examine how the international media saw Mandela, one has
to look at how his first trip to the US was seen and reported. It is fair
to say Americans saw him as a continuation and a culmination
/capstone of their own civil rights revolution. In 1990, the frenzy
and near pandemonium during Mandela’s America visit, as reported
in the press at the time (and near chaos in the background, city by
city, as overall tour organizers as recounted later) demonstrated just
how popular Mandela and his country’s impending revolution had
become as a popular public issue in the US. Mandela had become,
in the popular and media vision, a man who was rather larger than
life – even if he could not necessarily cure the sick and afflicted. He
was a salve for the emotional soul.
As for Obama and popularity globally, the Pew Research Center
does frequent polling about the popularity of America and American
leaders abroad. They found that Obama was consistently seen
favourably in almost every country on the globe, save perhaps for
Russia. Following Trump’s victory, the reverse has sadly become
true. I don’t know that Pew ever did any specific surveys of
Mandela’s popularity, but I suspect strongly that it would have been
found to be very high, nearly universally.
The question of political and post-political careers led to a
consideration of both men as global-style icons. The Mandela
Lecture delivered by Obama on 17 July 2018 was thus an
opportunity for Obama to stake out that territory, post-presidency.
(As an aside, former President John Quincy Adams spent a quarter
of a century as a congressman. From that period in his public life,
he is probably best remembered and respected now for having
served as the legal counsel before the Supreme Court on behalf of
the Amistad slaves in their bid to be recognized as free men.)
In respect to a question for the audience about the visual history
of the two men, I noted that Mandela had been lucky to have had his
early life as a lawyer and “young lion” thoroughly documented by a
group of gifted photographers such as Jurgen Schadenberg and Bob
Gosani, among others, who took so many of those iconic photos we
know now. Obama, by contrast, only became a photographic icon
after he had become a presidential candidate, although there are
numerous candid photos from his earlier days, included in the two
books he wrote.
In a final comment, I noted in response to an audience question
that in respect to Africa, perhaps Obama’s most remembered
comment was back in 2009 when he made his first speech as
president on the continent in Ghana. “The era of the big man (in
Africa) is over”, he predicted. Will he build on that and extend that
conversation in his post-presidency years? That will be an important
question and something worth watching out for in the future.
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The portrayal of Mandela and Obama in African and American media
Andrew Meldrum: Africa Editor, The Associated Press
In their lives and political careers, Nelson Mandela and Barack
Obama have received considerable coverage and scrutiny by the
news media. What comparisons and parallels can be made about
how the press covered the two historic leaders? To a large extent, it
depends upon what stage in their careers one looks at the media
coverage. Both leaders proved to be successful in making
compelling and strategic statements that defined how they were
covered, rather than leaving it to the media to determine how they
would be covered.
One common trait stands out: Both leaders are black. And the
news coverage rarely failed to mention that they were black. In
Mandela’s case, news stories reported that he was a black African,
anti-apartheid leader who succeeded in leading South Africa to full
democracy. In Obama’s case, most press coverage highlighted that
he was a black or bi-racial politician who succeeded in rising to the
pinnacle of the American political system and was president for two
terms. Of course the histories of the two men are quite different,
although both overcame considerable racism. Mandela was raised
under a system of harsh minority rule which eventually became the
apartheid system. He challenged the discriminatory, racist regime
through the law and then through armed resistance, for which he was
jailed.
During his lengthy imprisonment, for 27 years until his release
in 1990, the South African press was not able to report on him freely.
The international press did not have those restrictions, but had very
little access to information about Mandela. Unable to report on the
basis of what he would have had to say, the international press
focused on the actions of his supporters, and the statements and
actions of his wife at the time, Winnie Madikizela. There were just
a handful of photographs they could use all from the days before and
during his arrest and arraignment in court in the 1960s. And there
was ringing nearly 11,000-word statement that Mandela had made
before his sentencing at the Rivonia treason trial in Pretoria in 1964
for his leadership of the underground movement, Umkhonto We
Sizwe. A particularly bold quote from the statement would be
replayed countless times:
I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African
people. I have fought against white domination, and I have
fought against black domination. I have cherished the
ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons
will live together in harmony and with equal
opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and
to see realised. But, My Lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal
for which I am prepared to die.
Those moving words were quoted over and over again, and became
a symbol of what Mandela stood for. That statement, which Mandela
carefully crafted, became the words which defined Mandela in press
coverage for 27 years while he was in prison and well beyond that.
Mandela consciously wrote the speech to appeal and influence an
international audience as well as South Africa’s population. It is
widely hailed as one of the most important speeches of the twentieth
century. Of course, some press painted the imprisoned Mandela as
a communist, Marxist and socialist firebrand. Others reported that
he was simply determined to end apartheid and win equal rights for
all South Africans.
When Mandela was released from Victor Verster prison in 1990,
he spoke to a huge crowd in Cape Town. Once again he carefully
chose his words to encourage a magnanimous vision of South Africa
with rights for all. South African and global media covered media
in a manner befitting one of the momentous happenings at the
beginning of the last decade of the twentieth century. He said:
Our struggle has reached a decisive moment. We call on
our people to seize this moment so that the process
towards democracy is rapid and uninterrupted. We have
waited too long for our freedom. We can no longer wait.
Now is the time to intensify the struggle on all fronts. To
relax our efforts now would be a mistake which
generations to come will not be able to forgive. The sight
The Mandela-Obama effect: Legacies, divergences and convergences
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GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
of freedom looming on the horizon should encourage us
to redouble our efforts. It is only through disciplined mass
action that our victory can be assured.
We call on our white compatriots to join us in the shaping
of a new South Africa. The freedom movement is a
political home for you too. We call on the international
community to continue the campaign to isolate the
apartheid regime. To lift sanctions now would be to run
the risk of aborting the process towards the complete
eradication of apartheid. Our march to freedom is
irreversible. We must not allow fear to stand in our way.
Universal suffrage on a common voters’ role in a united
democratic and non-racial South Africa is the only way to
peace and racial harmony.”
To conclude, Mandela then repeated the “I am prepared to die”
words of his sentencing speech.
Today, we can see that those speeches, combined with Mandela’s
imposing physical presence and his gracious charm, succeeded in
giving him the status of a secular saint - a figure who appealed to an
extremely wide international audience. As a journalist, my favorite
aspect of Nelson Mandela was the way he spoke. He pronounced
each word with care and had a deliberate, halting cadence that was
a gift to reporters. Even though my note-taking is slow, I was able
to write down each and every word that Mandela spoke.
Barack Obama had a very different career as a politician. He
never went to prison. He never led a struggle against a minority-rule
regime. His critics tried to portray him as a radical revolutionary and
even un-American, but he succeeded in staying on message and
appealing to a wide range of people in the U.S and, indeed,
internationally. The speech that introduced him to many Americans
was when he spoke at the 2004 convention of the Democratic Party
in support of then presidential candidate, later secretary of state
under his presidency, John Kerry. Not well known, Obama was
campaigning to go one up from Illinois state senator to a federal
senator, and his name, Barack Hussein Obama, sounded foreign and
even threatening to many Americans grappling with the post-911
terrorism scares. Obama’s genius was to address these apparent
deficiencies head on in a speech praised as among the best in
America’s political history. He said his unusual background, with a
Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas, was proof of America’s
greatness as a melting pot of many cultures and ethnic groups. He
said he grew up with the belief that “in a tolerant America, your
name is no barrier to success.” He added that it was the exceptional
opportunities in the U.S. that allowed him to forge a career in
politics. “In no other country on Earth is my story even possible,”
he said to rousing applause. In that speech, Obama held up his
“otherness”, such as his race and name, as proof of America’s
strength.
Obama also used his oratory to bridge the political divisions in
the country. “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative
America; there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black
America and white America and Latino America and Asian
America; there’s the United States of America.”
The speech was a tour de force that thrust him into the top ranks
of the Democratic Party, and within a few short years he was the
party’s candidate for president. “Yes we can” became his defining
words, not just in the campaign but throughout his presidency.
Obama, a Harvard-trained lawyer, also spoke carefully and said
exactly what he meant and rarely had to retract or correct or
apologize for his words. By the time he became president, the
mainstream press did not focus so much on the fact that he was
black, or a man of color, but that he was an intelligent and effective
politician who succeeded in representing a liberal set of policies that
appealed to a wide range of Americans and an international
audience. Of course, America’s more political press, especially the
conservative press, strongly criticized Obama throughout his
presidency, but he was widely acknowledged as an astute and skilful
politician.
By the end of their political careers, press coverage of both
Mandela and Obama concentrated not so much on the fact of their
skin color, but in their success in winning followers from a broad
spectrum of people in their countries and around the world. Both
leaders succeeded in managing the media coverage of them, so that
they were not portrayed as dangerous and threatening radicals.
Instead, through well-written speeches and strategically chosen
words, they succeeded in getting the mainstream media to portray
them as successful politicians.
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Mandela and Obama: the convergences of legacies?
Bob Wekesa: Coordinator, ACSUS Public Diplomacy Programme
The 2018 International Mandela Day on July 18 was perhaps the
most defining one from past and future editions of annual
commemorations. For many, the apex of the celebrations was on the
eve of the 100th birthday celebrations with former US president
Barack Obama’s delivering of the sixteenth annual Nelson Mandela
Lecture on July 17. Ahead of the event, the palpable anticipation
was understandable given the apparently meticulous and extensive
preparations marked by a pre-event buzz in South Africa and around
the world.
The great expectations were to some extent orchestrated. The
ruling party, ANC, earmarked 2018 as the year of Mandela. The
Nelson Mandela Foundation launched a two-year programme of
activities in February 2017 branded as NM100. The African Centre
for the Study of the United States based at Wits University hosted a
forum dubbed the “Mandela-Obama Effect: legacies and soft
power” on July 10. There were events galore around the world.
Two factors reified the event: commemoration of the 100th
birthday of Nelson Mandela and the choice of former US president
Barack Obama as the keynote speaker. 100 years was the magic
milestone for reflection on the centenary of the life of a global icon,
who, left indelible footprints on the sands of time. The selection of
Obama as keynote speaker elevated the commemorations as the
former US president compares favourably to speakers at past annual
lectures such as Bill Clinton, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Thabo
Mbeki, Kofi Annan and Bill Gates. It can be argued that Obama had
greater global brand capital and a connection with the Mandela
brand than some if not most of the past speakers. Indeed, it was the
genius of the Nelson Mandela Foundation to have mooted the idea
of an annual lecture which essentially fused the ideals of Mandela
with those of prominent like-minded leaders.
Obama’s involvement in the Mandela commemorations invited
questions on the place of the two great men in world politics. Media
reporting on Obama’s keynote speech rekindled debate; comparing,
contrasting and assessing the personas of Mandela and Obama.
Some went so far as to conclude that the Obama was/is the heir to
the Madiba mantle. This touched off a number of questions: Was
Obama a worthy successor of/to Mandela? What are the
intersections of their leadership traits, legacies and visions? How did
their influences converged and diverged? Were their contributions
to tolerance, equality and humanity under siege? Amidst the
adulation of what they represent and symbolise, what were the
connecting threads with regards to their failures and shortcomings?
Were they, in fact, overrated? What was the impact of their joint-
cum-separate impact on Africa-US relations and on the global
stage?
Mandela and Obama are acclaimed as giants of not just the 21st
century but all time history. Both strike a mystical, even messianic
image in the eyes of their “fans”, Mandela perhaps more so than
Obama. In part, the reified visages are based on the eloquence,
prophetic messaging and soaring speechifying in the course of
pursuing difficult agendas in their respective countries as well as in
tackling knotted global issues. Although both are Nobel Peace Prize
laureates, some analysts have argued that while Mandela deserved
his Obama’s was based on the euphoria of his election and
announced months into his presidency. Mandela’s Nobel Prize was
shared with former apartheid-era president FW de Klerk while
Obama’s was personal. Mandela is one of the most feted leaders of
all time, the designation of the July 18 as the International Mandela
Day by the United Nations being emblematic in these respects. It
would appear that Obama is following in these footprints given the
clamour for him to visit, speak and be honoured across the world.
The self-evident difference is that they lived in different epochs.
Indeed, a comparative analysis of Mandela and Obama is a work in
progress given that the latter is not only still alive but has recently
embarked on the post-presidency phase of his legacy. Obama was
born in 1961, the year Mandela and his comrades formed Umkhonto
we Sizwe. Mandela spent 27 years in prison a fate that never befell
Obama; thus, Mandela is seen as having sacrificed much more than
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Obama. Obama’s rise was meteoric in that he jumped many notches
from being a junior senator straight to the oval office; Mandela’s
rise was over a longer arc much of it forged while he languished in
prison. Mandela was already a global hero by the time he became
president; Obama was virtually nondescript by the time he ran for
the Illinois senate seat and eventually the US presidency in 2008.
Obama became president in 2009 at the age of 47 while Mandela
became president in 1994 at the age of 77. Mandela died in 2013 at
95 as retired president and statesman, when a 51-year old Obama
had just been re-elected for the second term. One of the peaks in
Mandela’s political career was reached at the height of the Cold War
when he and his comrades were served life imprisonment in 1964;
Obama’s major peak was achieved in the post-Cold War era with
election as US president in 2008. Interestingly, it is the divergences
in age-based trajectories that inspire the thought that Obama has
taken on the baton from Mandela. Obama’s eulogy at the memorial
service of Mandela on 10 December 2013 is seen not only as one of
his finest speeches but also one that indicated his inheritance of the
Madiba spirit.
From the social-cultural and identity perspective, Mandela was
designated for a royal role in the AbaThembu royal court while
Obama was a “commoner” raised by his mother, a stepfather and
grandparents. Thus, Mandela’s leadership style is much more
“African” in orientation, while Obama’s is much more “worldly”.
Even when we consider dissenting voices critical of their
transformational impact in their countries and the world, it is
indisputable that they rose to global fame. Although their
“greatness” is based on political leadership, they compare
favourably on the “fame” factor with figures such as Ludwig
Beethoven in music or Muhammad Ali in sports (note that both are
sportive – Mandela as a boxer, Obama as a basketballer).
The evident proximity in personas reclines on the fact that they
both claim an African heritage and were the first black presidents of
their race-challenged nations. We can speculate that it is for this
reason that Mandela and Obama seem closer to each other than they
are to other giants of history such as Abraham Lincoln or Mahatma
Gandhi even though the four share civil rights campaigning stripes.
Where Mandela shook hands with and embraced his jailers, Obama
symbolised the closing of ranks between black and white
Americans. On the whole, it can be argued that both Mandela and
Obama are charismatic leaders who drove change at critical stages
in their respective countries even as debate rages on the extent or
value of their transformational impact on societies.
In the centennial tagline of “find the Nelson Mandela within”, the
organisers of the Mandela centennial were seeking to protect,
enhance and sustain his legacy going. Similarly, the establishment
the Obama Foundation shortly after his exit from the White House
in 2017 is ultimately aimed at extending his legacy beyond his oval
office days. Theoretically, every human being leaves behind a
legacy of some sort. It is just that the legacies of Mandela and
Obama are founded not just on “large” personalities, but also
because they are institutionalised. Indeed, both exhibited leadership
qualities early in their careers; Mandela in the ANC Youth League,
Obama as president of the Harvard Law Review and as a community
mobiliser in Chicago. It is therefore interesting that Obama’s speech
was framed as a continuation of the Mandela legacy. It is Interesting
because as Obama ramped up the Mandela legacy, he also boasted
his own.
Thus, in July 2018, the Mandela and Obama legacies intersected,
converged and coalesced in a manner that gave vent to the thinking
that Obama is the heir-apparent to the spirit of Mandela. The
“Siamesing” of Mandela-Obama legacies had in fact been for some
time. Both penned glowing tributes to each other and Obama wrote
the foreword to Conversations with Myself, Mandela’s memoirs
published 2010. Coincidentally, their defining autobiographies;
Long Walk to Freedom and Dreams from my Father were published
in 1994 and 1995 – a year apart – as acts of legacy building. It is
against this background that the palpable similarities and confluence
in the Nelson Mandela and Obama foundations in terms of
objectives should be seen. Barring a couple of differences, both
foundations are focused on children and young people issues, in
other words, investing in the future.
As great men, Mandela and Obama are endowed with global
reputational capital but their legacies are under siege. Received
wisdom is that the significance of “average” national leaders recedes
after they leave office, in a sense; to be out of sight is to be out of
mind. For great men and women who are considered to belong to
the ages, however, reputations keep growing from one generation to
another. At this point in time, the ideals that Mandela and Obama
stood for while in office still influence politics in their respective
countries. But, will the legacies of Mandela and Obama endure well
into the future as do those of all-time-greats such as Karl Marx,
Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln, Kwame
Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere among others?
It would appear that Mandela and Obama are on course to enter the
global hall of fame. However, a number of factors threaten the
inscription of lasting Mandela and Obama legacies in global
consciousness. These are factors that suggest the erosion of
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GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
reputations in such a way that the legacies are diminished with the
passage of time. For instance, in the wake of the death of Winnie
Madikizela Mandela in April 2018, critics introduced a narrative of
Mandela as a bitter former husband. Noticeably, Winnie was been
eulogised as “mother of the nation”, an anomalous inscription given
that she was no longer Mandela’s wife when he became president in
1994. Even though Obama’s marriage to former First Lady Michelle
Obama remains intact, Mandela’s troubled marriages mirrors
Obama’s own life as the union between his American mother and
Kenyan father broke early in his childhood. Some have gone so far
as to intimate that Obama appropriated Mandela as a symbolic
father, a perspective that animates the Obama as successor to the
Mandela legacy narrative. Indeed, it would appear that the Mandela-
Obama relationship is more symbolic than it is realistic, given that
they physically met only once and very briefly in 2005. The bigger
question is whether or not the unconventional family dimensions of
their lives would serve to ruin their legacies, especially so in the case
of Mandela.
As the economic equality issues have risen, commentators have
labelled Mandela as sell-out of the blacks, especially on matters of
land ownership among other economic imperatives. Similarly,
Obama’s legacy is seen as being wiped out by the successor
administration in the US since early 2017 the White House,
President Donald Trump. Signature policies of the Obama
administration such as the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), the
affordable health care deal and US rapprochement with Iran and
Cuba have been rescinded. The Paris climate agreement
championed by Obama has also been reversed. Obama’s reputation
has been sullied by America’s intervention in Libya (under the UN-
sanctioned NATO banner) as well as the drone attacks undertaken
under his watch in the Middle East and eastern and northern Africa.
Mandela’s good name was somewhat bruised for schisms with
African leaders such as the late Sani Abacha of Nigeria, South
Africa’s military intervention in Lesotho during his tenure and
differences with Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. Generally, criticism
has levelled at both for putative “betrayal” in not challenging
poverty and inequality, at least from the perspective of the
constituencies they are seen as having represented: South African
blacks/African Americans and Africans on the African continent
and other African Diasporas. Both were trained as lawyers, but
elected for leadership approaches steeped in making concessions
and compromises rather than pursuing equality on the basis of legal
parameters. Some applaud their reconciliatory mien; others hold that
they should have prosecuted the social injustices that afflicted their
racially-divided countries a little more vigorously.
In other words, some hold that both men went too far in
embracing the ethos of negotiation and reconciliation while
overlooking the down trodden. In some quarters, the perception is
that Obama’s presidency was marked more by oratorical exploits in
comparison to the perception of Mandela as much more a man of
action. Some say Obama’s legacy is “soft” in the sense of being
based on abstract symbolism rather than being forged in the “hard”
realities such as changed laws or accords. Mandela led the
promulgation of a new constitution, Obama’s legal and policy
changes as observed in this essay have or are being obliterated. But
generally, both are seen as having left behind divided, even
traumatised societies, despite their efforts.
The qualities that underpin their leadership style are seen as
forged by tolerance, inclusivity, democracy in a world that is
increasingly turning nativist, exclusionary and populist. Mandela
and Obama may have established strong ideals while in office only
to see these ideals eroded once they relinquished instruments of
formal power. For both, legacies have to be nurtured outside of
formal statecraft, more so in the case of Obama, less so in the case
of Mandela.
While Mandela would have approved of Obama’s efforts at the
entente between the US, Western Europe on the one hand and Iran
and Cuba on the other hand, he would have disapproved of Obama’s
involvement in the assassination of Muamar Qaddafi and the whole
Libyan debacle given the lifelong friendship between Mandela (and
the ANC) and Qaddafi. On the Israel-Palestine conflict, Mandela
would have wanted Obama to be more assertive in support of the
Palestinian course rather than his equivocal stance.
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Legacies under siege: a view from the Donald Trump and Ramaphosa
presidencies
John Stremlau: Visiting Professor of International Relations, University of the Witwatersrand
This piece takes the Nelson Mandela centennial celebrations of 2018
as a springboard for comment on the implications of the presidencies
of Donald Trump in the United States (US) and Cyril Ramaphosa in
South Africa for the legacies of Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama.
Donald Trump stirred up US presidential politics in 2011 as the one
potential candidate to embrace conspiracy theorists claiming Barack
Obama’s presidency was illegitimate as he was born in Kenya.
Disregarding official validation of Obama’s birth certificate, Trump
persisted with the racist smears for years. Not until September 2016,
after he had secured the Republican presidential nomination did he
grudgingly affirm the truth.
Trump and many of his Republican allies continue to demean,
denigrate and disparage Obama, his presidency, and his legacy.
These include substantial numbers of white ethnic nationalists
convinced Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again” will
primarily benefit them. Barack Obama espouses very different
views. Congressional and Presidential elections between now and
2020 will test whether Trump’s, or those who share Obama’s views,
prevail (note that this was before the congressional elections in late
2018). The result will resonate abroad, with lessons and warnings
for other democratic experiments, and affect US relations with
Africa and the rest of the world.
America must aspire, in Obama’s view, to become more
inclusive, as Mandela wished for South Africa: a country that
belongs to all who live in it, united in its diversity. Obama prefers
consensus over confrontation at home and multilateralism over
unilateralism abroad. He advocates the power of hope, not fear;
empathy not arrogance, and partnership not domination. Obama’s
views are closer to those of South Africa’s President Cyril
Ramaphosa, not those of former President Jacob Zuma, whose
personal and leadership traits are more akin to Trump’s.
The late Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui once referred to the United
States (US) and South Africa as the “world’s first global nations.” It
is a phrase more reflective of the aspirations of Mandela, Obama,
and Ramaphosa, than of Trump or Zuma. The contrasting views of
the two incumbent presidents will be considered first.
The contrasts in the presidencies of Trump and Ramaphosa can
help in shinning a light on their standing at home and in the
international system. Trump’s views and policies defy conventional
analysis. During his first 600 days in office, according to fact-
checkers at the Washington Post, Trump lied or made misleading
statements over 5,000 times on public matters large and small.
Trump’s primary means of communicating his views to other
governments and the public is via Twitter. During this same period,
he tweeted over 3,000 times, blurring distinctions between his
personal and presidential views, as all are ‘on the record’ and data
for early assessments of his legacy. Those, tweets, appearing to be
impulsive, ill-informed, mean, undignified, and amoral probably
perplex Trump’s friends and foes alike.
None of Trump’s tweets targeted Africa, until Wednesday night
22 August 2018. Without warning or prior consultations, he attacked
the South African government for allegedly seizing white-owned
farms and alluded to already discredited reports of widespread
killing of white farmers. This tweet may have pleased racist
elements of his domestic base, and fringe groups in South Africa
with whom they have ties. Majorities in both countries, however,
would agree with the New York Times editorial branding it a “vile
ploy.”
President Ramaphosa’s response to Trump’s tweet revealed his
different views and approach to presidential leadership and South
Africa-US relations. His first public reaction was that Trump should
focus on America’s problems and he would deal with South
Africa’s, especially one as complex and tied to resolving South
The Mandela-Obama effect: Legacies, divergences and convergences
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GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
Africa’s historic injustices as land disposition. South Africans must
and would solve their own problems themselves. In public remarks
a few days later he reminded everyone that South Africa had
resolved a more intractable and difficult problem, negotiating a
peaceful end of Apartheid that surprised the world. He promised to
emulate Mandela’s consensus building approach in resolving the
comparatively less daunting land issue.
The flare up over land also differs from the less public but
mutually beneficial bilateral interaction between US President
George H.W Bush and Nelson Mandela in 1991. Bush voiced
concern about reports of rising violence in South Africa and urged
Mandela to invite then Secretary of State James Baker to mediate.
Mandela thanked Bush but said success depended on South African
ownership of the problem and its resolution. Ambassador, Princeton
Lyman described in his memoir, “Partner to History: The U.S. Role
in South Africa’s Transition to Democracy”, how mutual respect
and understanding between Bush and Mandela, paved the way for a
critical period of rapid improvements in US-South Africa
cooperation. A similar degree of trust did not seem possible between
Ramaphosa and Trump.
Were Trump’s behaviour and views to be interpreted for South
Africans, this task might best be done by the comedian and social
critic, Trevor Noah. In November 2016 Noah presciently drew
parallels to the leadership traits and faults between Jacob Zuma and
Trump. Zuma may be more politically savvy and ruthless than
Trump, but they aggressively attack the media that threatens to
expose their misdeeds, disparage the judiciary that could indict
them, placating populist bases with unmet promises and enriching
themselves and their cronies at the public’s expense. “Brothers of
another mother” was how Noah summed up Trump and Zuma, a
phrase that instantly went viral in America and South Africa.
Ramaphosa launched his presidency with a promise to the nation
to emulate Mandela’s views and virtues. On 11 February 2018, four
days before becoming state President, he announced all government
ministries and agencies would hold year-long Centenary
Celebrations of Mandela’s birth and legacy. Motivating the
campaign was a commitment to rectify the damage done to
Mandela’s legacy during the years of escalating corruption, abuses
of power, and state-capture by a small but powerful group of
grifters, including President Jacob Zuma.
When Ramaphosa delivered the Annual Steve Biko Lecture at
UNISA, on 14 September 2018, his Mandela-like views on national
inclusion, economic equality and social justice were roundly
applauded. ANC national polling results appeared in the press the
following week and showed Ramaphosa’s popularity at 72%
compared to 61% for the ANC. However, rowdy protestors
shouting ‘Azania women remember Marikana’ briefly halted the
Biko lecture proceedings. It was a jarring reminder of the 34 people
killed in 2012 during a labour dispute at a platinum mine owned by
Lonmin, when Ramaphosa was a company director and major
shareholder. Between 2001 and 2014, Ramaphosa became one of
the richest men in South Africa, and then served as Zuma’s Deputy
President until turning against him last year. Thus far neither appear
to be serious political liabilities. Unlike Trump, Ramaphosa does not
face serious competition from other party leaders. His foremost
challenge was to reunify the ANC ahead of the 2019 presidential
elections, which made his effort to focus the nation on Mandela’s
legacy politically shrewd and appropriate.
Interestingly, Zuma has not gone away from the public sphere
with this causing some discomfort to the Ramaphosa presidency.
This somewhat strikes semblance with the situation across the
Atlantic in the US. This could be seen from the perspective of
Obama’s views as an antidote to Trump in US domestic and foreign
affairs. During the first eighteen months of Trump’s presidency
Obama upheld US presidential tradition of not publicly criticizing a
successor. On 17 July 2018 he re-entered the political area with the
delivery of the Annual Mandela Lecture in Johannesburg, the first
major address of his post-presidency. He delineated key attributes
of Mandela’s character – selflessness, empathy, dignity, honesty,
decency, and fortitude, among others. All are character and
leadership traits foreign to Trump, as US media reports of the
address noted.
Obama also endorsed Ramaphosa as Mandela’s confidant and
worthy successor. President Mandela is believed to have preferred
Ramaphosa to be his successor in 2001. Allusions to this were
prominent during welcoming remarks for Obama prior to his lecture.
The main thrust of his lecture was a strategy for advancing and
entrenching democracy, building on Mandela’s legacy, but also
framed in ways that would have inspired and motivated his
supporters in America. Two months later, on the mid-term elections
campaign trail of 2018, Obama delivered a sequel to the Mandela
lecture, more explicitly critical of Trump and his Republican
enablers. And he repeatedly called upon his supporters to vote
themselves and bring others to the polls, promising to do all he can
to support candidates who would counter Trump.
From a demographic perspective, prospects for reviving the
Obama coalition are promising. By mid-century America will be a
“majority-minority” nation of African-Americans, Hispanics,
Asians among others exceeding the number of Whites. US opinion
polls in 2016 suggest this fuelled much of the resentment and
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GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
reaction driving many White voters across all income groups to
support Donald Trump. American journalist-author, Ta-Nehisi
Coates book on Obama’s presidency, We Were Eight Years in
Power, includes an epilogue on Trump, entitled “The First White
President.” Although this “nativist” phenomenon helped to elect
him, his presidential performance is increasingly seen as so
incompetent and malevolent that by mid-2018, Trump’s approval
ratings were the lowest ever recorded for incumbents at that stage of
their presidency. These were lowest not only among minorities, but
also White women, youth and many urban voters.
Arrests and convictions of Trump’s former national security
advisor, former campaign manager, his personal attorney, and
several other Trump associates revealed fraud, money laundering,
tax evasion, campaign collusion with Russia and obstruction of
justice that increasingly implicate Trump. Prospects for reviving a
diverse Obama coalition appear increasingly likely. If this happens
then it is at least conceivable Obama’s political heirs might finally
be empowered to begin reforming America’s deeply flawed
democracy.
America’s democratic deficits, however, are structural and
rooted in the constitutional bargain of 1789. These will be extremely
difficult to reform and have recently been reinforced by a
Republican Party’s bid to entrench and perpetuate minority rule. For
although the South African and the US constitutions both begin with
the identical words, “We the people…” the fundamental goals are
different. South Africa’s constitutional priority is to advance and
entrench human rights and was adopted in 1996 with Ramaphosa
one of the main architects. America’s, however, privileges states’
rights, “in order to form a more perfect union,” initially among
thirteen former colonies, now fifty states. Although America’s
founders are celebrated for having created the world’s first large
national republic, this did require preserving substantial ‘sovereign’
authority for the member states of this new federation.
To reassure the less populated states, greater powers were
granted, primarily by creating a two-house federal legislature with
the upper chamber comprised of two Senators from every state, the
lower chamber reflecting relative populations. Presidents would be
chosen by an electoral college composed of state delegations equal
to their numbers in both chambers. Trump was able to win in the
Electoral College because of over-representation of predominantly
Republican southern and rural states, despite losing the popular vote
by three million. Senior appointments to the federal judiciary and to
the cabinet and other senior executives required Senate approval,
again, given the Republican minority greater power.
Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago and
knows well its strengths and limitations, as well as the fundamental
contradiction between the Constitution’s privileging states’ rights
and founding human rights principle of America’s 1776 Declaration
of Independence, “the proposition that all men are created equal …”
Although the US Constitution did not initially include a Bill of
Rights, ten articles were quickly added but with a major concession
to wealthy special interests: the right to private property would
include African-American slaves. By the mid-19th century
America’s slave-dependent cotton industry had become the world’s
fourth largest economy, with the financial investment in those
4,000,000 slaves estimated at over $10 trillion in today’s money.
Such vast wealth bought power and until the Civil War assured
the South’s oligarchs of non-interference by the Federal
Government, white power that was consolidated under “Jim Crow”
segregation and one-party rule that leveraged federal protection until
the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Party allegiances shifted
after that with the Republican’s ‘southern strategy’ contributing to
several national political victories. Until 2016 the white racism
inherent in that strategy was not so blatantly evident.
For Mandela’s legacy to flourish, Ramaphosa and Obama will
likely be among his most prominent, articulate, and persuasive
advocates. Each of them, however, has immediate political
challenges. Ramaphosa must first undo the damage done to his
country during the misrule of Jacob Zuma, while also unifying his
party, the ANC. Obama no longer enjoys the prerogatives of office,
as he tries to rally and broaden the diverse coalition that twice
elected him, to elect a new Democratic majority in Congress and
President in 2020. If he succeeds the result will be a more receptive
and responsive US partner for Ramaphosa, and perhaps even
burnish Mandela’s legacy.
President Ramaphosa has to redress the entrenched effects of
colonial domination, racial oppression and exploitation while
grappling with the urgent need to redress the political and economic
damage due to corruption and other abuses of power during the
2009-18 administrations of President Jacob Zuma. On the other
hand, Obama is using his considerable influence to help elect like-
minded allies capable of containing and perhaps overturning
Trump’s many assaults on his legacy and, in a wider sense, the
global legacy of Nelson Mandela.
The editors of this volume and the South African universities
sponsoring it have issued an urgent reminder: Sustaining any
democracy is too important to be left to politicians competing to lead
it. Among Nelson Mandela’s much-quoted beliefs was: “Education
is the most powerful weapon, which you can use to change the
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GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
world.” Universities can do so in three ways: by empowering
individuals, though the generation of new knowledge, and for their
protection and promotion of universal democratic values of inherent
equality, freedom and peace with justice. Obama reminded us
during his Mandela lecture that we are all entitled to our own
opinions but not our own facts, especially on vital and contentious
issues within and among nations. Citing the example of climate
change, he noted that reasonable people can disagree on policies to
redress this problem. But we can no longer tolerate the close-
mindedness and selfishness interests of those who claim the problem
does not exist. Scientists everywhere tell us otherwise, citing
credible data as their defence. In an era of ‘fake’ news and rising
illiberalism, the contributions of research and training universities
can offer us the best available versions of truth on a host of vitally
important scientific, economic, cultural and political issues vital to
our individual and collective well-being. They also can inform,
verify, and help hold accountable the programs and policies
governments promise to pursue on our behalf. Ensuring universities
fulfil this role surely will also honour the legacy of Nelson Mandela
and those leaders who seek to ‘stand on his shoulders’ in South
Africa, America, and throughout the world.
.
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GLOBAL DIALOGUE September 2019
Acknowledgements
The Institute for Global Dialogue (IGD) would like to thank the African Centre for the Study of the
United States (ACSUS) based at the University of the Witwatersrand for producing this Volume.
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